Game just does not give you the info about damages, so here they are. I'm open to suggestions about what data would be nice to have as well, to make at least a bit of an educated choice of a weapon.

I've tried to add the most puzzling choices as well with some calculations behind it, like what assault rifle is better and which is the best between tow/recoilless/plasma recoilless to actually damage a Legion tank.


ap44 - means that it deals 44 Armour Piercing damage
2-3:he90 - means that it deals 90 High Explosion damage in a radius of 2-3 meters
2-6:fr70 - means that it deals 70 Fragmentation damage in a radius of 2-6 meters
0.5-1:fl70 - means that it deals 70 Flesh damage in a radius of 0.5-1 meters
therm 18 - means that it deals 18 Thermal (plasma) damage
cm750 - means that it deals 750 Cumulative damage

The damage is applicative and not "choose the one that'll do the most damage to the target and ignore the others".

Say a gun does the first 4 at the same time against a completely unarmoured target. The damage would be 44+90+70+70=274 in total. But frankly the only thing that does not have any armour in this game is infantry, so each damage type would be resisted a bit and the total resulting damage would need to pass through armour value.

I don't think that stating pure damage against unarmoured target is that important, since situation can change drastically when keeping resists in mind. Each damage type has it's own resist depending on the target type, so every value that is stated here will be changed one way or the other in the end result.

There's also some dependancies on unit experience. With leveling up in general troops will fire more accurately (you'll start to notice this when they are at lvl 3 and higher, that's where the biggest bump in accuracy happens usually) and some guns will deal more damage.

About said accuracy. It scales with level and calculates the deviation from the directly lined shot. It looks like this - every assault rifle shot at lvl 0 can deviate on x, y, z axis by 0.6-1, 0.3-0.7, 0.3-0.5 respectively and at lvl 5 this deviation minimizes at 0.1-0.5, 0.1-0.3, 0.1-0.2. I kinda can't translate it to be understandable and can't imagine it myself.

Just know that like everything that scales in this game accuracy improvement becomes noticable at around lvl 3, and accuracy on the move is about 30-50% worse than from stationary position. It's especially bad for recoilless rifles, where accuracy on the move can be up to 90% worse.

Stated them already in different guide, but it's useful here as well, just to keep main tables on the same page.

Here are resists for different vehicles:


And here are the resists for tank types:


Legion uses only base armour basically in terms of resists.

If you want to know more about armour related info - it's in a different guide, since I found it too huge to compile them both in a single guide:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3192067219

Added this info here so that you could plan TTK of enemy and your own forces by any weapon stated in this guide.

Your infantry units:


Enemy infantry units:


Legion units (no levels here):

Revs - 350 HP
Homunculi - 220 HP
Wolves - 90 HP
Swarm drones - 15 HP

You can also choose armored perk. It adds *1.2 to base health. As of Uprising DLC there's also another armor perk that opens up after you've chosen the first - this one adds another *1.1.

Now I'm not that sure how they add up but I think it's (base HP*1.2*1.1), so for level 5 militia it'd be (115*1.2*1.1)=152 HP, which is very formiddable.

Even if it's (115+23+11.5) (if we think that percentages only apply to the base HP values) it's still good and nets the same-ish 150 HP.

From what I can tell enemies are always at lvl 0, so it's safe to say they have 60-75 HP in general per model. That means that default sniper rifle is okay-ish against humans for instance, expecially from level 2 onwards (1 hit for human), but definitely change it for Barret/Laser when fighting Legion.

EDIT: Devs said somewhere that at higher difficulties enemy will spawn higher level squads from time to time. That explains some deadly accuracy of enemy FFAR helis or infantry being harder to kill.

Some weapons have reeeeal small AOE near point of impact (shotguns and all plasma weapons) - I'm ignoring the area for this part, since it's miniscule, leaving only damage. Just know that it's really small and will hit more than one model if your people stand shoulder to shoulder.


M4 and AK47 fire more shots per volley and AK47 has 20-25% more time between shots, so fighting Cartel base infantry should be easier. Default one fires a single shot per volley, so change it to something ASAP for squads that will actually fight close-ish to the enemy. But the question which assault rifle is better is another story.

Handguns and MP-5 are... there? They are kinda useless, the damage is minimal and range is eh. Hilariously enough MP-5 are decent vs infantry at squad level 5, since they do tiny bit more damage than M4, but I struggle to imagine a situation where this would be important.

Plasma shotguns are godly - they can deal A LOT of damage rather quickly, if you can get close. There is a small catch tho that makes default ones somewhat comparable - they fire 5 shots before reloading, while plasma fire only 3. So basically at lvl 0 squad you trade 5*43=215 damage to infantry (default shotty) per volley for 3*94=282 damage to infantry at closer range (plasma ones) per volley. Default ones can't threaten vehicles tho, so here's that. There's not a lot of such tricks in the game, but it may be good to know.

Also normal shotguns would need 2 shots to kill humans at lvl 0 and only at level 4 they'd be able to one shot. Plasma ones 1 shot humans.

While plasma LMG has low range, said low range allows the whole squad to fire at the same time, since assault rifles have same range. So all in all it's a direct upgrade over other LMGs - you really don't want situations where a single shooter breaks consealment and the enemy just stands at max range to pummel you, leaving your assault rifles idle.

Keep in mind that the sniper perk that increases damage only increases FL damage. So it's kinda useless, since that damage type is mostly ignored when attacking vehicles and picking it does not allow you to 1shot Revs even with Laser rifle anyway, while you'll still 1shot homunculi with Barret even without taking that perk.

And shotguns work pretty amazing against any infantry. Assault rifles are more complicated to choose the best one.

I've tried to incorporate this info in the damage table, but it makes it VERY messy and hard to follow, so I guess it'll look better as a separate one.

Some definitions that I'll use here, what do they mean:

• Shots per volley is, well, what it says - amount of shots that'll be in each volley/burst.
  
• Shot period here is time in seconds between shots in the volley/burst. Kinda important for fast firing saturation guns.
  
• Reload time - time between volleys/bursts of a weapon. In seconds as well. This is what's level dependant, while shots per volley remain the same. The less it is the more DPS there is, obviously.
  
  Thought about using Inter-Volley Interval (IVI) term for this, but it's not that easy to remember, so Reload time it is. It's not particuraly reload time by definition, since we don't reload that many guns and is more like a pause, but eh. IVI is difficult, plus I never found that anyone uses this term ever anyway.

Some weapons use only Shot period and some use only Reload time. Like if something volley consists of a single shot then it won't have Shot period at all.

Reload time of 2.9-4.8 means that some random time between 2.9 seconds and 4.8 seconds will be chosen, to my knowledge and testing.


Assault rifles suffer a 30% accuracy penalty when they are being fired on move. MGs suffer 50%. It's good to keep that in mind and try not to fire on move. Still their firerate can at least somewhat compensate for it.

Shotguns have no penalty for firing on move and that's one other reason why they are good when storming buildings.

Even though the game says that Laser sniper is slower firing than Barrett - it's not the case, they share the time between shots. The ony thing that's different in terms of firerate between them is that Laser one will fire a bit faster into smoked areas - Barrett has a modifier of 0.8, while Laser has a modifier of 0.9 and the dev note there says that the lower this modifier is the longer the reload time is.

The default sniper rifle fires 1 second faster than both of them tho, if you ever wanted to use default one for some reason.

Advanced LMG and Plasma LMG fire at completely the same rate, but Plasma one fires 1 less shot on average in every burst.

All this HP and damage talk means that on level 0 squad assault rifles would work like this:

• NGSW-R (20 damage total) - 3-4 hits for human, 5 hits for wolf, 11 hits for Homunculi, 18 hits for Rev.
  
• Plasma rifle (35 damage total) - 2-3 hit for human, 3 hits for wolf, 7 hits for Homunculi, 10 hits for Rev.

Huge difference, plasma rifle is strongly superior.


On level 3, the corner stone level that you should strive for for every squad:

• NGSW-R (34 damage total) - 2-3 hits for human, 3 hits for wolf, 7 hits for Homunculi, 11 hits for Rev.
  
• Plasma rifle (50 damage total) - 2 hits for human, 2 hits for wolf, 5 hits for Homunculi, 7 hits for Rev.

Difference is much less, the numbers start to become comparable.


And if you somehow manage to get a squad to level 5 (it's difficult, I don't think I had more than a couple in my two playhtoughs) things would be better and that's why I tend to love NGSW-R:

• NGSW-R (45 damage total) - 2 hits for human, 2 hits for wolf, 5 hits for Homunculi, 8 hits for Rev.
  
• Plasma rifle (60 damage total) - 1-2 hits for human, 2 hits for wolf, 4 hits for Homunculi, 6 hits for Rev.

Not a lot of difference here at that level. Extra info is that from lvl 4 assault rifle accuracy is same-ish to lvl 0 sniper rifle.

If only that damn plasma rifle was 80 range it'd be the best in slot forever, but alas. That extra range loss could mean squad wipe if attacking any kind of Rev. And the more experienced a squad is the more chances are that they will kill the enemy with NGSW-R's range before it can deal enough damage to them.

Still, there's these Movement Militia squads that can have 115HP per model at lvl5 (the most HP out of all humans), 10 unit models and +20% HP perk also on top of that so they could pair with plasma rifles real good at that point, surviving long enough to get close and demolish the enemy infantry. The problem is that getting militia to lvl 5 is torture, even though they need 30% less EXP than most (and rangers/guerillas need 30% more than most).

Another use for plasma rifles is if there's a chance to fight in tightly packed building block. I've found myself in a situation sometimes where there's an enemy light vehicle hunting my Militia and I had to play cat and mouse just to survive until reinforcements came. If I had plasma rifles I would've stopped and fight, but NGSW-R would not be able to hurt said vehicle fast enough. These situations are rare though, at least in the main campaign - I've found myself in them twice (!) in my ~150 hours of gameplay.

UPD: Some more testing during farming showed that 10 men level 3 militia squad somehow manage to kill a spider in a couple of volleys with plasma rifles. Huh. NGSW-R can't do that.

In the table I deleted some 0.5 AOE from point of impact since it doesn't really matter (it's for HE damage mostly). If it's more than 0.5 radius - it's stated and it matters at least somewhat. Except for anti-personnel mines, since it makes sense to include it.


LAW, RPG-7 and SMAW are completely the same - the only difference is that SMAW has 10 more range and has a bit less ammo than RPG-7, and LAW does not scale.

SRAW AT is a monster on an experienced squad and close-ish to ATGM damage values. It's also exactly the same damage as recoilless rifle AT shells from heavy weapons teams or vehicles, but much more mobile and close ranged.

SRAW HE has huge AOE (even bigger than ATGM), so it can really damage clustered up light vehicles or buildings.

Rocketeer perk reduces your AT rockets ammo, bringing it to the number of HE variant (and unlocking said variant), but Powerlifter perk gets it back, resulting in you just doubling your rocket supply. HE rockets can be used against light/medium vehicles, buildings and infantry, leaving your AT supply for fighting actual tanks.

A point of consideration is here - if you use only RPG-7 then Rocketeer+Powerlifter combo will give you 2 more rockets of each kind than you'd expect. 18 AT + 18 HE instead of expected 16s. Not sure why it does that.

ATGM AA can also be used against light vehicles - you just need to manually fire, with the F button. Yeah they reduce your supply of ATGMs and AA duty can be done by any fast firing gun on vehicels, I know. But with Powerlifter they give 4+4 missiles in total so it's pretty decent in my opinion.

ATGM AT VS TOW. They both have the same damage, but ATGM has bit less AOE of fl damage for some reason. ATGM also has smaller range and fires a bit faster if the target is protected by smoke (if you ever wanted to fire it in the smoke).

Hand grenades... have limited usage. In original campaign the usage is almost none, but in Uprising the enemy likes to move vehicles very close, so grenades can help a bit. Plus it seems that lobbing grenades does not stop reloading, but your infantry men will stop to throw and thus can be killed easier.

About them vs vehicles say you attack a spider, the lightest vehicle the Legion has with grenades, and they will land just beneath it (25 bottom armour, 400 HP). That'll be 21+15+5=41 damage per grenade at basically point blank range, not counting the armour in this calculation. So you need 15+ slowly tossed grenades to kill a spider. A spider that's armed and basically specialized in killing infantry at ranges way longer than 25 hand grenade has... Don't do that.

Plasma shotgun guerillas are your choice in CQC killing spiders if you want that. Whopping 67+10+3=80 damage per single shot from a single plasma shotgun, not counting armour, and you'll have 3 shots at the same time on average, and since they fire in volleys of 3 shots usually it's 3*3*80=720 damage.

C4/Mines don't really have rate of fire, so it doesn't make sense to add them at all.

For hand grenades despite them having 0.1 seconds between shots that's stated here - they are trapped by animation time here. They may be ready to throw another already, but can't until the animation is finished.

Different types of rockets/missiles (like AT/HE RPGs or AT/AA ATGMS) don't have different reload times and, well, there's no infantry based explosives that fire more than once before needing to pause. It's vehicle MLRS that can fire more rockets per volley.

Yes, SRAW and ATGM have the same rate of fire. Well, they have close-ish damage also, so they are pretty good as you may've guessed.

Important difference between ATGM AT and AA - the velocity of the missile is different. AT leaves the tube with a speed of 20 and AA starts with 50 speed, so basically that means that AA flies 2.5 times faster. That, with combination with it's damage profile, better range and the ability to manually fire, makes AA missiles a pretty nice answer to sudden appearance of MLRS spider for instance, that you just need gone ASAP. Another plus is that REVs don't trigger AA missiles and enemy flier are rare, so you are not that prone to accidentally fire 2-5 AT missiles at a single REV with no control over it, wasting 400-1000 resources in a moments notice.

In comparison LAW/RPG/SMAW have a velocity of 30 and SRAW is the same 20.

Leveling up your ATGM/SRAW wielders is totally worth it for the cutting in reload time.

C4 is a monster. Vehicles have pretty high HE resistances across the board but it doesn't matter when facing such huge numbers. Leveling up increases the radius of explosion, so if you like huge booms - level up your C4 users.

But why exactly does C4 kill everything? It should kill everything for a single reason - every vehicle, except spoiler one, has 20 armour from the bottom. That's reasonable.

But the resists of tank would make it do less than half it's potential damage (instead of potential 870+200=1070 it'd deal 435+5=440 damage). In game files tracks usually have just steel resists, with no indication if it's tank or vehicle, but even if we take it as a vehicle ones - it's still 621+105=727 and that's no 800HP the tank has.

The only explanation I have is that it must hit a lot of hitboxes at the same time due to huge AOE radius, doing it's damage to more than a single vehicle part. Legion Tank has 2 hitboxes for tracks for instance, so that way the damage would be applied twice and even with 20 armour it'd exceed the HP the tank has. Now it is possible that the hitbox for engine is also being hit and if that's so - the case is solved.

If it'd done it's damage only once the resists would not have let Legion Tank die even when the explosion would be from the bottom.

If that speculation is true than SRAW HE is even more decent against different vehicles, since it has huge AOE as well and vehicles have quite a lot of extra hitboxes. Like spiders have 2 gun hitboxes, plus it's main body and head real close together, making explosives devastatingly effective. Still not enough to use hand grenades tho.

Again, TOW is here for comparison only. You can't equip it on Heavy Weapons Team in the unmodded game.

Minigun is real bad vs everything BUT infantry and light vehicles, but chews both of them as they were nothing. It's rate of fire allows it to crank DPS over vulnurable targets to infinity and beyond, especially if the crew that has it is experienced to lower reload time.

For Plasma HMG the scaling is there, but it's not really important since this gun should be used mostly against vehicles and terminator infantry in the open, plus maybe some HK Aerial shooting. Default .50 cal is still a very decent choice.

Grenade launchers are weird. They are very innacurate, but have nice AOE, so they can clear buildings pretty decently before you storm them. Point is that Stryker can have them as well for same exact role, so there's really not many reasons to give them to your Heavy Weapons Team. Plus infantry grenade launcher, that rangers have for instance, has the same damage profile as mounted ones, just with a bit less range.

Minigun, as expected, is a saturation gun. It can dish out it's damage 4 times as fast as default .50 cal (40 bullets per volley instead of 7-9 with more than 4 times faster firerate). It's even faster and more saturated than Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon (tiny bit longer the interval between volleys and 15-30 bullets in a volley).

Plasma HMG fires a bit slower than .50 cal - 4-6 bullets between pauses. Technically I'd say that it's a straight upgrade over default only due to damage. It will miss about 20% more comparing to .50cal against people in buildings, so keep that in mind.

Default .50 cal is actually pretty good. There's no real need to change it to anything, since it's one of the guns in this game that's really just default and decent in any situation, not "change to anything else ASAP" default (yeah, I'm looking at you, default assault rifle).



TOW fires about 30% faster than ATGM. It also will reload slower if the target is in smoke (it has a 0.6 modifier to reload time vs 0.8 modifier that ATGM has), not that you'd want to fire into smoke ever.

Normal recoilless rifle is quite powerful, since it scales, in the hands of lvl5 squad but against tanks the game implies that you should use plasma recoilless. Plus there's of course ATGM/TOW option.

So which one is actually better?

Let's see what'd happen when we fire at Legion tank:

• With lvl 0 crew normal recoilless can dish out 90+500+30+40+50=710 damage. With the magic of resists that damage will become 90+333+15+1+5=444 damage at best.
  
  
• With lvl 5 crew normal recoilless can dish out 90+599+30+40+50=809 damage. Whoosh and resists make that damage become 90+399+15+1+5=510 damage at best.
  
  
• Plasma recoilless can dish out 500+70+30=600 damage. Seems worse than normal one, but resist magician is here again - resists will make it 500+35+3=538 at best.
  
  
• TOW can dish out 750+70+40+50=910 damage. Resists will make it 500+35+1+5=541 at best.

Now from the front Legion tank has 410 armour, so basically normal recoilless will just tickle it regardless. You'd need a crew of lvl 5 to get close to plasma/TOW variants of said example.

Plasma will damage it at least a bit, plus after some thinnin, say after Abrams shell, plasma will do pretty decently and may even blow it up in a single shot following said shell.

TOW launcher is pretty good, as expected, but real close to plasma recoilless in terms of damage. The range is superior of course, but there's also a variable of smoke being used by your target, making you waste a precious rocket.

Personally plasma recoilless is the best choice against heavy armour. TOW does not have a lot of ammo and due to some choices you can spend a lot of time without ATGM or TOW, while plasma recoilless you gain as your literal first heavy weapon in the game after tutorial levels and is not that uncommon.

As an additional info plasma recoilless reload time at worst roll is just about the same as TOWs, while stil being tons faster than ATGMs.

Leave normal recoilless for attacking light/medium vehicles, or maneuver the hell out of the vehicle/squad carrying one - it will still hurt a lot when the shell connect to the side or back of a tank.

Subjectively a lot here depends on how level up your crew is. If it's low-ish level - your choice should be rotary cannon, since this way at least some shots will connect and you will get at least some of the potential damage. If it's level 3+ - definitely equip light plasma, since it's a direct upgrade from the default 25mm.

Personally I just never use the default autocannons. They are decent, don't get me wrong, but they fire agonizingly slow and don't do that much damage. They can be unexpectedly devastating on Legion spiders though, since they basically have twice the fire rate due to 2 firing at the same time.

Keep in mind Bradleys mobility tho. Even with default autocannons they can circle around Legion Tank and fire at the back of it, while it sloooowly turns. Not a lot of vehicles can make this maneuver just dangerous and not straight suicidal.

Rotary cannon can dish a lot of damage rather quickly, it deals with enemies in buildings very good as well as with light/medium vehicles, while having the same range. While it definitely benefits from more experience crew since otherwise it'll miss a lot and waste damage - it's a good default to train noobie crews with due to the sheer amount of bullets it can dish out.

Cartel tank has build-in cannon that you can't change and it's again not that great. While it's decently powerful and can damage/kill light/medium vehicles - I won't hurt Legion tanks. And since cartel tank is made of paper, but takes the same deployment spot as Bradley... In my opinion it's best to get rid of these after Vega and use them before it to get some salvage - their AP shell overpenetrates a lot of human vehicles and make them fo on fire instead of blowing them up. So shoot AP, kill evacuated crew, capture, repair, sell. Rince and repeat.

Technically you can use their mobility as well (they are REAL fast) to circle around the tank and kill it, but again - cartel tanks are made of paper and the moment engine is damaged by a stray assault rifle bullet they are dead.

Kinda funny that reload times for everything Bradley can have is the same. It makes it even less sense in my book to use default autocannons. At least 20mm is decent and different from 25mm and light plasma at saturation.

Everything here can fire on move and suffers 30% accuracy penalty.

When fighting tanks with Abrams or default movement heavy platform - turn off HEAT shells. Your tank defaults to using them for some reason, even when AP cariant is tons more effective in this case. HEAT will deliver 200+367+60+2+5=634 damage, while AP will deliver 730+0.5=730.5 damage.

Also if you attack convoy and can get them all stay in line - your AP shell will pierce a lot of light/medium vehicles. I killed 3 vehicles with 1 AP shell for instance checking this out, feels real good, but AI rarely changes to AP shell on it's own volition, so a little micro intensive.

Default AP shell and Heavy plasma shell deal comparable damage to each other against Legion tank - 730.5 vs 810. Sure, Heavy plasma does a bit more, but changing to it from default leaves you with no HE damage and removes coaxial gun, so you must spend a plasma shot for every single little target and buildings will not crumble so easily anymore. And it'll still require you more or less the same amount of shots to kill an enemy tank. So overall the default is pretty decent choice till the end of campaign, there's no real reason to change it to anything ASAP.

Twin Light Plasma Cannon is exactly what it is - same everything from the ordinary Plasma Cannon, but fires twice as fast. Personally - two Bradleys with Light Plasma Cannon are much better and much more versatile than one Abrams with Twin Light Plasma.

Railgun is a monster, what can I say. Highest damage in the game and it applies fully, since the resist against AP damage is always 1 for tanks and it's even more devastating against vehicles (whopping 2174 damage, total overkill). Not that you should fire at vehicles with this, but hey if you feel that it's fun - go for it.

30mm rotary are what was on Founder turrets during Haven defence mission. They are a nice visual spectacle, they work very-very good against infantry, light/medium vehicles and buildings, but are completely useless against tanks. Frankly not that interesting since this role is already covered by 20mm Bradleys. Their main problem is that they reload somewhat slowly and do not have enough saturation - 20mm fire twice as frequent and twice as many rounds.

Now maybe if you use experienced crew with 30mm it'd work better, but still - if the first volley didn't kill the enemy it'll do quite serious damage to you and that's not a problem with the default shells, since they often leave enemy damaged in some sense to allow you to safely make another shot.

Coaxial gun is basically the default infantry machine gun but on vehicle. So kinda useless against everything but infantry and the lightest of vehicles. It has nice ammo supply tho.

Cartel tank also has a coaxial machinegun. It's the same damage as the one your Abrams/Heavy platforms have, but it has 2200 bullets instead of 5000.

So yeah, 30mm rotary are not that great. ~2x times the damage over 20mm, but drasticaly slower reload times and lower rounds in volley. Plus it rids you of a heavy cannon.

It could work around the corner on a platform tho - there it'll attract all sorts of attention and kill most of things point blank regardless of how many of these things come at the same time (bonus points for equipping it with grenade launcher for it to be extra annoying and drawing even more attention). If there are tanks - hide some AT infantry across the street, since tank will aim at the platform way before it's able to fire, leaving it's back pretty vulnurable.

Still a gimmick but at least this particular strat makes them work for me. Say in Uprising DLC when somebody attacks your main sector there are plenty of places to set this up.

About accuracy, kind of important. Heavy Plasma has 50% penalty when firing on move, while your ordinary 120mm have only 30%, so more to using default one and trying to force Legion tanks to fire on move to increase your chances of survival.

30mm also has 30% penalty and railgun cannot be fired on move.

None of the heavy guns damage scales with level. I mean you do get increased accuracy since the crew gets it with exp and you do reload faster (about 2 seconds faster reloading between lvl 0 and lvl 5), but the damage is the same.

As a word of advice - try to get all your firing crew to level 3 ASAP to cut a second from reload time, since first two levels will not give you all that much reload time reduction. Lvl 4 and lvl 5 will each cut half a second or so.

For example let's take 20mm light rotary cannon. Pauses between volleys would be:

• lvl 0 - 2-4 seconds
  
• lvl 1 - 1.9-3.8 seconds
  
• lvl 2 - 1.7-3.5 seconds
  
• lvl 3 - 1.5-3.1 seconds
  
• lvl 4 - 1.3-2.6 seconds
  
• lvl 5 - 1-2 seconds

Also you can see how that perk for 10% faster reloading is not doing all that much on already fast firing weapons. You want to take a perk that gives you 0.2-0.4 second faster reload at lvl 0 and 0.1-0.2 second faster reload at lvl 5? Yeah, not that much of a difference, you won't notice it during battle.

Basically taking this perk at lvl 0 will bring you to lvl 2-ish reload time. And the sad part is that almost all machineguns/chainguns (.50cal, minigun, light plasma cannon, twin plasma cannon) and assault rifles (default, m4, NGSW-R - for plasma and cartel it's +1 second on the higher end) share this profile.

Now for Abrams and plasma shells leveling up effect on reloading is not that drastic:

• lvl 0 - 9 seconds
  
• lvl 1 - 8.9 seconds
  
• lvl 2 - 8.7 seconds
  
• lvl 3 - 8.4 seconds
  
• lvl 4 - 8 seconds
  
• lvl 5 - 7.5 seconds

And here the perk for faster firing speed would be amazing regardless of crew level, since it cuts almost a whole second basically. This one is noticable, bringing you from lvl 0 to lvl 4 reload time instantly.

Same damages as for Heavy Weapons Team weapons basically. But bigger ammo capacity in general. Also same rates of fire, so I honestly don't see a need to create a separate section for it.


One very interesting thing here is that recoilless rifles loose a lot of accuracy when firing on the move. Other guns do loose some, but recoilless fire are the worst.

All fast firing guns loose about 30% accuracy on the move, but recoilles rifles loose 90% from what I understand. So you better stop before firing with them for real.

Also recoilless have the biggest reloading penalty when firing through the smoke out of every single mounted gun (yes, even worse than TOW). If the target is in smoke then it'd take twice as much time for them to actually fire at that target.

About grenade launchers. Their shots arc, so the smoke that you or your enemy might have used for defence matters little, plus you can fire above small buildings and play a bit cat and mouse with your persuer. Mounted they have more ammo.

Not all ammo storages were created equal after all. So it's important to keep that in mind while making a decision which vehicle should house which gun.

First of all - Armored carrier trailer and M113 APC have 30% more ammo for any mounted gun than other vehicles. So they can make a pretty nice TOW platform for instance, especially M113, since it's too paperthin to use in the actual combat. Personally Armored carrier shines while being pulled by a dozer (with closed hatch, so that it'd suffer less crew deaths), while housing some recoilless rifle/plasma HMG and 20mm rotary cannon.

Second of all - Abrams/Heavy platform (and Int. Tank, if it matters) halves every mounted gun ammo that it has. So minigun is only 1200 for it, while by default it's 2400. Coaxial gun is still decent-ish in fighting infantry and has 5000 ammo, so there's no need to mount something anti-infantry. Plasma recoilles work with it's default shells in a good tandem, oftenly killing tanks in a simple 1-2 combo.

Third of all - Stryker. Oh man, Stryker. This is a monster. It's weapon choices are limited (.50 cal, minigun, plasma HMG or grenade launcher), but for all of them it has 3.3 times more ammo!

Plus Stryker has no gunner - the weapon is remotely controlled, so you are less in risk of loosing gunners to snipers. It's an amazing APC, just born to support your infantry, plus them 32 smokes it has that's about 50% more than other vehicles. Give it experienced crew to minimize that reload time and improve accuracy and it'll drown enemy in bullets/grenades.

Technically you can also loot Integrators Technical and it'll have slightly more than average ammo amount (1.66 times more from default) and remote turret as well, but you can't refuel Integrator vehicles, so you probably won't get enough mileage out of it (in any sense).

A small table specifically for Stryker comparison:


Frankly it's the only vehicle that I use with mainly mounted grenade launcher due to the huge ammo reserves comparing to other types and the benefits of arcing shots. Well, and also since I use them mainly to dliver rangers/guerillas to a house that needs storming. Minigun can also work pretty nicely with this goal in mind.

Note: There's some weird bug that made all the ammo in stryker have half capacity of what's stated here. Verifying integrity of game files fixed it for me, so if you enounter it - just verify files.

Pretty straightforward. Damage wise mortar humvees are worse against buildings and vehicles, but will hurt infantry pretty hard. Funnily enough they are named as infantry mortars in game files, so it's safe to assume they could be planned for heavy weapons teams to use (or this is a legacy from the previous game, like a lot of data in gamefiles).

In comparison Plasma artillery hurts a LOT more than Founder/Movement. It's your normal heavy plasma shell that tank has, but on steroids since it has big fragmentation damage. It demolishes vehicles with a direct hit, heavily crippling even Abrams and buildings do not like plasma artillery shells, even though they can provide decent defence against a tank plasma shells. I also remember seeing a lucky plasma artillery shot that instantly destroyed a helicopter (damn fun it was tho).

Plasma artillery in it's rotary variant is a bit lower damage and a lot lower range, but it fires 3 shots every 7 seconds, so it's a rather good saturation variant in my opinion that is really dangerous to light vehicles and infantry. Sucks to be on the recieving side of those shells, but it's less of a threat to actually heavy vehicles than the standart variant. Take a note that it's even less AOE potential than normal one.

Spider-based MLRS are scary, since they fire 6 rockets in close following, after that it's 13 seconds pause to reload. So you just have to survive the first volley and then go for a kill, since they are actually VERY damaging to anything that's not heavily armoured. The only plus is that they cannot be fired while moving, and that the actual range is the same as most of other equivalent weaponry, despite game telling you in tutorial that they fire from very long range.

I know that their damage profile is closer to your ordinary explosive weapons (infantry rockets for instance), but for the sheer amount of saturation they get I tend to see them as close quarters artillery piece, so it's in this section.


HIMARS are HIMARS, nuff said. 10-50 radius of AOE - that's some real big booms right here. They are very expensive to fire tho (400 supplies per rocket) and very innacurate - they share a spread with MLRS that some Legion spiders have.

Not so straightforward here.

The small plus that mortar humvees have over light platform - they fire A LOT faster (5.5-7.5 seconds between firing VS light platforms 13 seconds) do not need to deploy and they do not eat another deployment slot.

Plasma Artillery actually fires faster than 155mm one - it's 1 shell every 5 seconds if it knows where you are. You need to have level 5 crew operation your artillery to reach that frequency yourself.


Funny things happen with 105mm howitzers. For some reason light howitzer (light platform) not only are weaker, but fire ridiculusly slow in comparison to 155mm - at lvl 0 reload time for light howitzer is 13 seconds, while heavy one (heavy platform or paladin) reload is only 7 seconds. Really feels like this should be reversed, but for some reason it isn't.

Combining this with them having less ammo than mortar humvees I'm not sure they are even viable, but frankly in original campaign you don't have a choice if you want light artillery so it's only a headache in Uprising DLC. On the plus side they look somewhat cool and are better against buildings a bit.

Plasma FFAR is superior to 70mm FFAR - it fires 5-6 rockets instead 3-4 rockets every 5 seconds, plus the difference in damage speaks for itself. As a sidenote Plasma FFAR does not have recoil if it matters to anyone, so potentially normal FFAR can slow down your heli slightly when it fires. They both have same accuracy tho.

The default 70mm FFAR is just lower ammo count in MP/Skirmish/Uprising (14 instead of 38) and that's it. Otherwise it's completely similar to the bigger one.

Plasma HMG on HK Aerial is completely the same one that you can use on your vehicles, but with a lot of ammo. Same with Minigun you have on your human side helis.

Damage of AAM rockets is enough to kill Legion Artillery with one shot and it's the longest range missile you can use. Since helicopters grant a lot of vision and their rockets come from above (thus caring little about smoke) makes it a real good counter for most artillery pieces. To fire these rockets on something that's not flying just use manual command - press button "F" and choose your target. HK Aerials have flares, so AAM rockets actually suck against them, ironic as it sounds.

(Uprising DLC) The fact that ATGM can be equipped on MD500 is amazing, since after the initial cost of getting it (taking sector 11 and sector 8, paying 3069+1500 supplies) it becoms the cheapest ATGM platform/sniper you could get - it only costs 500 supply per day on realistic difficulty.

HK Aerial and all helis explode. When they crash down they deal A LOT of damage, so try not to kill them right above your units. The damage also is weird, since it's written twice and the numbers are vastly different, but from experience it seems to be closer to the first set of numbers - (2-15:he200 ap120 , 25-35:he900 7:ap200 25-35:fl300). Probably one of these is for explosion as a kill and the other is for explosion when hitting the ground, but I'm not sure. If it's true, then yeah, 320-1400 damage in total when they explode, scary stuff.
Other possibility is there that second number here is just what happens when you rig them with your units (Reactor on Legs perk) and then blow up, since this number is used in every Legion vehicle and some integrator ones.

Closing hatches, since I mentioned them earlier. When you have a hatch open - that's what makes it possible for all kind of rabble to attack the vehicle, they hope to hit a gunner that's sticking out from the hatch. Close the hatch and a lot of squads/vehicles just won't target your vehicles entirely, if the armour is too thick for their weapon to penetrate. My steel armoured dozer tanked 3 ATGM shots from the front and didn't bother much (cabin became yellow, but that's it) with hatch closed, while with hatch opened same situation killed 2 of the piloting crew.

Direction the damage comes from is important. A lot of vehicles have thickest armour from the front, so use that "R" button that allows them to reverse move. In the previous example my dozer survived solely due to me reverse moving the instant I saw incoming ATGM - if I just clicked with RMB it'd turn it's back to the other ATGMs and die in one shot. I honestly think that that blade in front is just indestructuble, since I never saw it thinning or becoming hurt.

Armored carrier. Kills from it's turrets do not give EXP for a squad that's manning them for some weird reason. So be advised.
EDIT - As of 29.07 with the release of a DLC this is no longer true. Kills from Armored carrier now do grant EXP correctly. But keep in mind that all the EXP goes to the first squad in the carrier, others are just passengers.

AP damage can overpenetrate, but I don't quite grasp the mechanics of this. Seems like it overpenetrates if it exceeds the armour value as I can see from tests with cartel tank, abrams AP shell and railgun. Every vehicle is made up of different amount of hitboxes, so it seems that a shell need to exceed the armour of each encountered hitbox to penetrate it. This would explain why sometimes cartel tank makes a light vehicle go on fire and sometimes just explodes it - if it hits more than one hitbox it's possible to do a lot of damage.

In terms of building penetration everything that is AP (bradley/abrams AP, railgun, airplanes fast firing guns, every bullet using hand weaponry) can do that to some extent. Plasma and explosives can't for the most part (legion swarm drones explosion can hit through cover), but explosives just destroy most of cover instead of penetrating it.

Laser rifle can penetrate some things for some reason. It does not have AP damage and thermal damage does not allow you to penetrate by itself, so why can it straight up go through some buildings cover is a mystery. Андрей_159 RUS found the needed cell in game files, that specifically states that shots from Laser rifle can penetrate buildings.

Platforms can fire on move, though with 30% lower accuracy. That means that Humvee/Technical/Van+Light Platform is your discount Bradley and Dozer+Heavy Platform - your discount Abrams, with turret always turned backwards at the start of engagement. In Uprising DLC the heavy platform for Integrators was added and it looks forward, so it'd make a somewhat better discount Abrams, but is REALLY thinly armored.

Hope that helps at least a bit.

• 27/03/25: Infantry weapons added
  
• 30/03/25: Vehicle/artillery weapons added
  
• 31/03/25: Small reorganization of info and text corrections
  
• 02/04/25: Noticed that for RPG-7 specifically Powerlifter-Rocketeer perk combo gives 2 more rockets of each type than you might expect
  
• 06/04/25: Powerlifter-Rocketeer perk combo for AA perk for ATGM actually gives you 2 missiles extra in total, and since you can use AA missiles manually against everything - that's a good thing in my opinion
  
• 06/04/25: Added info about helis exploding in remarks section
  
• 10/04/25: Caught some bug with stryker ammo, fixed it by verifying game files, added note here
  
• 11/04/25: Decided to include integrator technical ammo amounts in ammo disparity section, since it actually has quite a lot more ammo from default
  
• 13/04/25: Added Spider MLRS to Artillery section, since they are rather close in function in my opinion due to saturation
  
• 01/08/25: Corrected Laser rifle note, since Андрей_159 RUS found the needed cell in game files, corrected Armoured Carrier, since as of now it adds EXP correctly, added rotary Legion artillery
  
• 02/08/25: Helicopter weapons added, plus small correction to Armoured Carrier giving kill EXP only to the first squad in it
  
• 13/08/25: MD500 can actually equip ATGM (and is the cheapest ATGM sniper you can get in terms of supply upkeep), corrected the info in the table, also added info that AAM can kill artillery in one hit
  
• 20/08/25: Added infantry HP values, seem appropriate here. Plus reevaluated personal feels towards hand grenades - in Uprising DLC they can help, since enemy likes to drive light vehicles very close and sometimes grenades help deal with this onslaught.
  
• 23/08/25: Added infantry weapons rate of fire sections
  
• 24/08/25: Added some vehicle weapons rate of fire sections
  
• 01/09/25: Added artillery weapons rate of fire sections, cleaned up and rearranged some info a bit in general