Greetings everyone!

Welcome to another edition of Question of the Week. Today we're looking at weapons!

Malarius' question regarding weapons used in the game gets the spotlight this week.

Earthrise offers a futuristic game setting where ranged combat remains an ever popular way to dispose with your enemies. Choosing from a wide range of different ranged weapons - from common pistols to massive launchers - players who develop their skills in ranged combat will make the medium to far offensive line in combat. Ranged weapons do have the disadvantage to use ammunition - every time you hold the mouse button at an enemy, you are burning money, and the more expensive and damaging the choice of ammunition, the more costly the combat will be to your character's bottom line. Careful planning in order to avoid running in the red via combat will be important, and characters will be discouraged to use their most expensive ammo against enemies that simply do not provide comparable return to the investment. Also, ranged weapons have an advantage in combat from certain distances - when shooting from a too close or too far distance compared to a target, the damage output will be modified - there will be weapons that serve best from the rear of the battlefield, while some ranged weapons serve best as melee fighter's close assistance.

Melee weapons are here to stay, of course! Although Earthrise is not a fantasy setting, the recent advances in melee combat research have provided Enterian soldiers with powerful weapons made of light materials and embedded electronic generators and circuitry that power damaging effects on touch. Such weapons carry the same complication of ranged weapons, use of energy from embedded fuel cells that will generate expense to the player and powerful fuel cells should be saved against enemies that provide comparable return. Years of research and testing has proven melee weapons to exploit certain weaknesses in personal force field design that makes them very well suited for surprising ambushes or close, overpowering attacks. Melee weaponry has a place in PvP that makes otherwise anachronistic and outdated weapon in a meaningful and dangerous tool that many will either use or avoid at any cost.

Probably a candidate for most interesting array of arms is employed by the Cybermentalist, a specialist trained in using special brain interface allowing him to control his weapons using subconscious intuition, emotions and such. We will have more information on the Cybermentalist when we're ready to reveal them, so keep your eyes on the site and future updates.

That's some interesting stuff right there, and we look forward to the discussion below! Thank you to our developers as always for taking time out to answer these questions for us.
~ m.

Nifty!

Two questions remain: will there be quirky trick weapons or ammunition that transcend the accuracy/damage balance with surprising and tactically valid effects? Like web and fog grenades, temporary gravitational fields, slow working shield corrupters, delayed blast thingies, rick-rolling sonic weaponry? On second thought, scrap the last one.

And: if my melee weapon runs out of batteries, will it at least do some bludgeoning damage or turn into an inert, unuseable artefact that's upstaged even by a moldy wormwood club?

I was wondering about that also

beautiful, combat just gets better and better.

Only question I have. Let's say a sniper gets to a hand to hand combat with a brawler, does the sniper receive and negative bonus if he decides to use his sword instead of his sniper rifle?

It's already been confirmed that ER will feature both shields and armor so while ranged weapons have... well, the range advantage this QotW clearly spelled out that melee weapons would bypass shields entirely so it's pretty safe to assume that melee weapons will either be spike damage or damage which bypasses lots of protections.

Yeah, I'd personally love to see the melee weapons, any plans on two-handed weapons?

Just one word... "Great"

Melee weapons would really make things far more interesting.
Although I can't wait to get some info on the "Cybermentalist" guy.

Sounds great, can't wait to see some concept art of the weapons too.