Type71 is a slightly worse Mod88; youâve really got to land every shot for it to work ok, and that means pacing the shots and not magdumping; very hard to use it effectively especially with scarce ammo.
I almost always take a pistol on my loadoats, and Iâve experimented with pretty much all of them, so these are my general thoughts:
The only outright good pistol (in the same sense the M41 is good - ease of use/reliability) is the mod88 because it has enough ammo in the mag you donât have to hit every single bullet to be threatening with it, it deals decent damage even to T3âs because of AP (so itâs always useful on any target), the ammo is readily available, and it basically has all the traits a pistol needs to be worth using.
The Smartpistol is ok, but damage and especially accuracy sucks. It needs a buff on accuracy imo.
The M4A3 is ok, but the magazine size sucks; itâs only really good (better than mod88) if youâre superhuman on reloading mags
M44, holdout, VP, and whatever other pistols (besides obviously stronger(ishâŚ) ones like the CO pistol) are basically complete trash, at best usable in extremely contrived niche situations whereas a mod88/smartpistol/M4A3 are almost always ok if not great to have.
In general I find people think the pistols are all way way better than they actually are. Lots of braggarts willing to tell you that everything is just a skill issue and you just need to git gud. Especially prevalent seems to be this idea that people hit every single bullet they fire, when the reality is everyone misses nearly every single bullet they fire.
So for those of you with a little bit of humility and a willingness to go for something that doesnât require peak superhuman performance to work; what has proven itself over and over for me - what is consistent and reliable: Is the Mod88. Just use that if you donât know why youâre grabbing a pistol or how to use it right.
In my experience, the things most important for pistols to be useful:
- Instant draw-speed
- Great accuracy one-handed
- Magazine size and damage output that forgives missing shots
- Enough damage output to force a xeno to back off, or finish them off if theyâre wounded
The VP feels like someone wanted to design it to be more of a primary weapon than a sidearm, but when they drew it up they didnât really playtest it, and their gamesense is uhh, so the on-paper stats look good at first glance, but the in-practice usage puts it nearly at the bottom of the list of pistols in the game. It is REALLY bad.
Below is from a .txt file I made up a few months ago about pistols; I was planning on doing an effort post then had second thoughts about it.
Beside the mod88 most of the pistols aren't worth using, so I'll summarize my thoughts on them and why I think this is the case:
---
Mod88
-
+ Big magazine
+ AP damage
+ Good RoF
+ Does not need to be wielded to be accurate
AP Ammo: - to - DMG / bullet
456 --------- 570 total possible damage
120 --------- 150 DPS (single)
103 --------- 129 DPS (burst)
There's not really any minus here; it's the gold standard pistol right now because everything else kinda sucks. The Mod88 has enough ammo and deals enough damage that all xenos have to give it some respect. Against T3's it's a decent pocket AP option that is actually accessible. Against harassers it has enough ammo that it'll eventually force them away. I don't think this pistol should be changed but instead used as the baseline to bring the other pistols up to par.
---
M4A3
-
+ Extreme RoF
+ Does not need to be wielded to be accurate
Highpoint: 8 to 55 DMG / bullet
72 -------- 495 total possible damage
72 -------- 495 DPS (single)
56 -------- 385 DPS (7rds/s instead of 10rds/s)
Regular: 8 to 40 DMG / bullet
72 --------- 360 total possible damage
72 --------- 360 DPS (single)
56 --------- 280 DPS (7rds/s instead of 10rds/s)
The M4A3 is good for dumping the entire magazine into something next to you in about 2 seconds (Doable in 1 second with inhuman click speed but most people can only click 4-7x per second).
This pistol's downsides are mostly from the small magazine. It has decent total damage potential but still low compared to the mod88. Highpoint against lightly armored xenos is good, but it runs out too fast to be generally useful against harassers, whom you will miss quite a lot.
My recommendations:
>Bump damage against max armor to 12 instead of 8
Reduce single shot RPM to 7; 10 gives a misleading theoretical DPS that won't be seen in practice
Increase magazine size from 8+1 to 11+1. (+3 bullets)
What I think this will do:
It'll make the pistol a bit more forgiving for missing, will increase the total damage it can deal to a level better than the mod88 against light targets, but still keeps the magazine size on the low end so you have to be accurate. Changing from 10rds/s to 7rds/s shouldn't have any actual impact on its performance in practice. Against armored targets it'll still be completely terrible, but not as bad as before.
---
VP78
-
Squash Head: 25 to 45 DMG / bullet
+ High potential damage if every bullet hits
+ Built-in flashlight and laser sight
+ Does not need to be wielded to be accurate
450 --------- 810 total possible damage
36 ----------- 65 DPS (single shot)
52 ----------- 93 DPS (burst)
This pistol. I don't even know where to start. I have no idea what this is trying to do, but it's not good at much of anything. It has a very low Rate of Fire, 5x to 10x higher recoil than other pistols, 5x more falloff than other pistols, slightly less accuracy, and double the amount of scatter of other pistols.
Personally I've tried hard to make this pistol work well and it just doesn't. You have to be extremely careful with your shots because of the low RoF to the point you hardly have any damage output at all and consequently the already low RoF + careful aiming makes it hard to deal significant damage to a lurker or runner before you're pounced, and very easy for them to get away without issue.
My recommendation:
>Increase single shot RoF to 2.5
Increase burst fire RoF to 3
Reduce falloff to 1 like other pistols
What I think this will do:
The pistol will be more forgiving for missing shots because you can follow up faster, burst fire will be the go-to for this pistol and it will deal damage overall a little bit faster (still not as fast as mod88). This will make the VP78 roughly equivalent to the Mod88 but with harder to find ammo.
That would at least be a good starting point for further adjustment later.
---
M44 Revolver
-
Regular: - to - DMG / bullet
+ Smartscope + special ammo can knock down T1's in crowds
+ Good per-hit damage
96 - 440 total possible damage
30 - 137.5 DPS
I hardly ever use this pistol, 6+1 is really anemic and relies heavily on landing shots which is very difficult. I think it's really only useful with the special ammo in niche circumstances and forgettable in every other situation.
