Chimera Squad Equipment Analysis: Weapons

Assault Rifle

3-5 damage base

+21 Aim at point-blank, starts gaining Aim 21 tiles out.

4 ammo

Used by: Verge, Patchwork, Androids.

Chimera Squad's iteration of the basic generic Rifle concept, with the same base damage as in XCOM 2, the same maximum ammo, and similar range behavior. This is kind of funny in that where the Rifle was uniquely widespread in the prior games, with three classes having access to it in XCOM 2 where most weapons were locked to a single class and two classes having it in Enemy Unknown/Within where only Pistols were more widespread, Chimera Squad's Assault Rifle is actually a bit narrow in its access, with only two non-Android agents having the ability to equip it vs the SMG and Shotgun both getting to be equipped by 3 non-Android agents. (And all three being available to Androids) Pistols and the Pangolin Gauntlets are more limited in availability than the Rifle, mind, so you can say the Rifle is right in the middle in accessibility terms, but it's still kind of funny.

Mechanically, the Rifle is as basic as weapons get, continuing the series tradition that a 'generic' weapon can get a modest accuracy boost for being up-close and all. In practice this probably makes it the worst weapon (Albeit by a small margin) aside the Pangolin Gauntlets, and the Pangolin Gauntlets being bad is more due to the combination of not being upgradeable and being attached to Zephyr in specific.

Speaking of upgrades, Chimera Squad continues the series tradition of each weapon type coming in three tiers of progressively more powerful versions. Like in XCOM 2, you upgrade an entire category permanently when purchasing the next step, though this has somewhat different implications given the new context with how agents are set up; depending on the squad you select, it's possible to have a single weapon upgrade affect 3/4ths of your squad at once, which in prior games could only happen if you stacked copies of specific classes. (Even if you were leaning into Rifle usage in XCOM 2, you still needed a duplicate class to get above 50% of the squad being affected)

Upgrades themselves are tied to the Assembly in Chimera Squad, where you spend Elerium and Assembly time on unlocking the ability to then purchase weapon upgrades with Credits, which is one of the more conceptually divergent aspects of the game; the Assembly essentially takes over the role of both research and the Proving Grounds from XCOM 2, and is presented in a manner that makes it seem first and foremost like a follow-up to the Proving Grounds. (When it honestly overlaps more heavily with what research did in the prior games)

Also divergent is the impact of these upgrades; in XCOM 2, the default progression for primary weapons was that they gained 2 points of damage per upgrade and also gained a point of crit damage. (War of the Chosen deviated from this model a lot, but it was still in some sense the clear default) I've previously implied crit damage doesn't go up with weapon upgrades in Chimera Squad, of course, and similarly touched on the other effects, but to be explicit: in Chimera Squad, each weapon type adds 1 point of damage, with the third tier (Master-crafted) additionally causing the weapon to have 1 point of Shred. All of this applies to every weapon type that can be upgraded in Chimera Squad; even though the Pistol is noticeably weaker at base than the Shotgun, both Pistols and Shotguns get +2 damage and 1 Shred out of being fully upgraded. Among other points, this means the difference between weapons 'flattens' as you progress; the Pistol having weaker damage than the Shotgun is a lot more noticeable when it's 3-4 damage vs 4-6 damage than when it's 5-6 damage vs 6-8 damage. After all, initially a Pistol low-roll is half the damage of a Shotgun high-roll, whereas when they're both fully upgraded a Pistol low-roll is 62.5% of a Shotgun high roll, and that's ignoring the probability you have an Ammo Item equipped to further reduce the gap. Alternatively, both of them rolling high shifts from the Shotgun doing 50% more damage to it doing 33% more.

The universal Shred from Mastercrafted weapons is more conceptually interesting than practically notable, since Chimera Squad isn't as heavy on Armor as XCOM 2. It does mean that grenades are less prominent in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2, but Chimera Squad puts itself in something of an awkward position where it can't really balance on the assumption that the player has Shred at any given point in the game except in the chain of missions that occurs after you've done all three Investigations; since you can do the Investigations in any order and there's no guarantee a player will have even one Mastercrafted weapon type in time for their first Take Down (Investigation target) mission, the game can't really have standard enemies or even boss enemies balanced around the idea that the player can definitely Shred them.

This problem is in fact practically relevant, as the Take Down Sacred Coil mission has a boss with 4 Armor; for a first-time player, I would recommend not taking Sacred Coil as your first Investigation, simply because said boss is a fairly major hurdle if you aren't already fairly strongly familiar with the mechanics and know what to do to prep for this boss in particular.

I do have to wonder if XCOM 3 will similarly make Shred a bit more of a baked-in assumption, though; XCOM 2 did suffer a bit from how high Armor amounts basically demanded heavy Shred or Armor penetration, when both qualities were not guaranteed to be found on an otherwise-sensibly-built squad. It made stuff like grenades, Heavy Weapons, and the Shredder skill on Grenadiers/SPARKs/anybody who got it as a bonus skill fairly centralizing, particularly in the late game where really high Armor is found on multiple enemy types. XCOM 3 could potentially get away with even heavier Armor amounts from even earlier in the game if it made light Shred an automatic quality of all (Or at least most) primary weapons at baseline or as soon as the first weapon upgrade was made, or some such, and Chimera Squad's experiment here does suggest thoughts in that kind of direction.

Anyway, while the Assault Rifle is probably the worst of the weapons aside the Pangolin Gauntlets, I should emphasize that Chimera Squad isn't really into the kind of 'magic number' design XCOM 2 utilized to make Rifle weakness stand out in the early game of the higher difficulties. There is nothing equivalent to how ADVENT Troopers on the higher two difficulties have just barely enough HP to sometimes survive a Rifle shot while always dying to the 'real' weapons. As such, to the extent that the Rifle is the worst of the weapons, it's not really by enough to care as a player. I have slightly mixed feelings about this from a design perspective, but at least agent quality isn't impacted first and foremost by their weapon type; that would have been very frustrating.

On an aesthetic note, an element it took me a while to notice about Assault Rifles in Chimera Squad is that they actually emulate ADVENT magnetic weaponry from XCOM 2 in regards to the firing pattern: two shots in close succession, followed by a pause, followed by a third shot. This is interesting on a number of levels, and honestly I would be perfectly happy if XCOM 3 brings back ADVENT-style magnetic weaponry as the player's foundational weapons tech; the audio and aesthetics for ADVENT weapons were pretty great, and it's very obvious I'm far from alone in this opinion given there's multiple XCOM 2 mods for letting the player use the ADVENT weapon audio and visual elements, all the way back to the base game even. And it's a nice little touch for implying that Chimera Squad's weapons are in fact supposed to be variations on the magnetic weapons from the prior game, in spite of the new weapon graphics and the shots being yellow instead of red and so on.

On a completely different note, I should point out that upgrading weapons in Chimera Squad works differently from in XCOM 2; in XCOM 2, if you didn't bother to purchase the magnetic version of a weapon and bought the beam-tier, this skipped right to the end, getting the full benefits of third-tier weapons without needing to invest resources in the second-tier weapons. In Chimera Squad, purchasing a Mastercrafted weapon type without purchasing the intermediate step will result in +1 damage and +1 Shred; you'll still need to purchase the intermediate upgrade if you want the other point of damage. This is mostly a curiosity, but can come up readily if you decide to swap in an agent relatively late who uses a weapon type you haven't been using prior to that point; you'll need to purchase both upgrades if you want them at full effectiveness.

Submachine Gun (SMG)

3-5 damage base

+21 Aim at point-blank, starts gaining Aim 18 tiles out.

15% chance for a missed shot to be upgraded to a Graze. ('Spray And Pray')

4 ammo

Used by: Terminal, Torque, Shelter, Androids.

Note that while various enemies are conceptually equipped with SMGs, they don't get the Spray And Pray effect. Internally, it's not an ability at all, but a stat labeled 'luck', and only your SMGs have any points of it. As such, SMG-equipped enemies are slightly less threatening/less of a priority than you might expect, and also not at all distinct from Assault Rifle-equipped enemies since enemy weaponry uniformly has 'flat' Aim modification, so SMGs and Assault Rifles having slightly different Aim climb tables is also irrelevant. (Because in enemy hands, they share the same table of 'never modify Aim based on distance')

Since SMGs and Assault Rifles share base damage and ammo counts, that means that SMGs and Assault Rifles in enemy hands are mechanically identical to each other, only the aesthetic elements differing at all. This is particularly unfortunate with the handful of enemies where individual members randomly can have any of an SMG, Assault Rifle, or Shotgun; in practice they just have a 1/3 chance of getting a bit of extra damage.

Anyway, returning to player SMGs, you might be noticing the rather odd value of getting up to +21 Aim with Aim starting to go up from 18 tiles out and wondering how that works and how that meaningfully compares to the Assault Rifle gaining up to +21 Aim having started gaining Aim 21 tiles out. And it's... weirder than you might expect, because Chimera Squad actually makes use of the fact that internally the Aim modification is an arbitrary table.

That is, what you probably assumed when looking at the Assault Rifle is that it just gains 1 Aim per tile, which would be a straightforward system and easy to remember. In actuality, it has a 'sweet spot' at range 11 where its accuracy bonus peaks at +15 Aim and then goes down for the next 3 tiles. (And then doesn't immediately return to going up; it only resumes going up at range 6) In principle I kind of like this, but much like with Long War 2, in practice it's problematic because the game's UI elements provide absolutely no accommodation for this oddity; if you got a preview of your accuracy against all targets in range when hovering over a given movement destination, you could readily account for such a 'sweet spot' behaviors and they'd be okay, but as-is in both Long War 2 and Chimera Squad you basically just have to have this stuff memorized... it only gets worse when you consider neither Long War 2 nor Chimera Squad clearly communicate this oddness even exists.

Fortunately, the Assault Rifle's 'sweet spot' behavior is sufficiently low-impact this isn't really a big reason to care -among other points, the 'get closer for more accuracy' rule of thumb still holds true overall, where the 'sweet spot' of 11 tiles out is less Aim than being within 5 tiles of the target- but it's not ideal.

By contrast, the SMG -and the Pistol, which shares the same table as the SMG- is the straightforward 'closer is better, always' rule. It does have one weird jump where it adds 3 Aim to go from range 7 to range 6, where most of the time moving one tile forward adds 1 or 2 Aim, but overall it's pretty intuitive.

If you're interested in the exact numbers, they are as follows:

SMG/Pistol Range Table

Range 18/17/16: +1 Aim

Range 15: +2 Aim

Range 14: +3 Aim

Range 13: +4 Aim

Range 12: +5 Aim

Range 11: +6 Aim

Range 10: +7 Aim

Range 9: +8 Aim

Range 8: +9 Aim

Range 7: +11 Aim

Range 6: +14 Aim

Range 5: +16 Aim

Range 4: +17 Aim

Range 3: +19 Aim

Range 2: +20 Aim

Range 1: +21 Aim

And now the Assault Rifle:

Assault Rifle Range Table

Range 22: +1 Aim

Range 21: +2 Aim

Range 20: +3 Aim

Range 19: +4 Aim

Range 18: +5 Aim

Range 17: +7 Aim

Range 16: +8 Aim

Range 15: +9 Aim

Range 14: +10 Aim

Range 13: +11 Aim

Range 12: +13 Aim

Range 11: +15 Aim

Range 10: +13 Aim

Range 9: +12 Aim

Range 8/7: +11 Aim

Range 6: +14 Aim

Range 5: +16 Aim

Range 4: +17 Aim

Range 3: +19 Aim

Range 2: +20 Aim

Range 1: +21 Aim

And to round out the set, what's the Shotgun's Aim table?

Shotgun Aim Table

Range 25: -30 Aim

Range 24: -25 Aim

Range 23: -21 Aim

Range 22/21: -19 Aim

Range 20/19: -18 Aim

Range 18: -17 Aim

Range 17: -15 Aim

Range 16: -12 Aim

Range 15: -10 Aim

Range 14: -7 Aim

Range 13: -4 Aim

Range 12: -2 Aim

Range 11: Neutral Aim

Range 10: +3 Aim

Range 9: +6 Aim

Range 8: +12 Aim

Range 7: +16 Aim

Range 6: +19 Aim

Range 5: +23 Aim

Range 4: +28 Aim

Range 3: +32 Aim

Range 2: +35 Aim

Range 1: +40 Aim

Some takeaways for the Shotgun table: firstly, the degree to which Aim changes as tile count goes up or down is overall most dramatic for the closest several tiles, where advancing 5 tiles closer when at long range is simply less of an improvement than doing so when it will bring the Shotgun-wielder to point-blank. Second, Shotgun accuracy is exactly neutral at the exact same range that Rifles hit their 'sweet spot', which is mildly interesting in terms of dev thinking but not particularly notable to the player.

So let's actually talk about the Shotgun!

Shotgun

4-6 damage base

-30 Aim at 25 tiles out, +40 Aim when point-blank, with 11 tiles as the neutral point.

3 ammo

Used by: Godmother, Axiom, Claymore, Androids.

The best base damage of your weapons, but also the only weapon type that has to deal with an Aim penalty.

Compared to XCOM 2, Shotgun range penalties are both more and less significant. Less significant, because Chimera Squad is prone to Encounter maps being pretty small -I'm pretty sure some Encounter maps are so small it's literally impossible to get the maximum range penalty! More significant, because of the change in who they're attached to; in XCOM 2, a target far enough away for a Shotgun to be operating at an accuracy penalty was often still well within Slash range. It generally required fairly significant terrain interference, like an intervening impassable river, for a Ranger to find themselves in a position where firing their Shotgun at an accuracy penalty was something to seriously consider doing. This was exacerbated by the fact that most targets that were dubious Slash targets were maximally aggressive in advancement; aside Purifiers, the enemies that were bad ideas to Slash never used Cover and so always advanced their maximum distance when first activating. So sure, you didn't want to Slash a Gatekeeper because they'd explode on you when killed, and Slashing an Archon was worryingly likely to miss, but in both cases odds were pretty good they were close enough for the Ranger to get Aim bonuses on their Shotgun.

Whereas in Chimera Squad, melee top speeds are overall lower (Both from Mobility going down and from the thing where the final action point is worth less movement if movement has already happened), and even if they weren't only Axiom has a non-Subdue melee attack out of Shotgun wielders. Indeed, at longer ranges all the Shotgun agents are liable to have to accept the Aim penalty; Godmother can use Ventilate, but it has a long cooldown and a high ammo cost that may mean the option is unavailable. (Such as if you used it in the previous Encounter to avoid having to fire with an Aim penalty there) Claymore has multiple special abilities that bypass accuracy checks, but they all have limited throw ranges. Axiom's alternate offensive actions are all restricted by his movement speed, where a target far enough away to impose Shotgun penalties is probably too far for him to Smash them or the like.

As such, while the Shotgun long-range penalty is rarely seriously hurtful and I'd argue it's overall the best weapon type simply because of its damage advantage and the limited relevancy of its accuracy penalty, I think it's on average hurt a little more by its accuracy penalty than in XCOM 2, actually. It's also not a big enough edge to overrule other agent differences; I'd say Claymore is a weaker agent than Torque, for example, in spite of him having a stronger weapon. In practice this mostly matters at the player decision-making level due to Androids being able to equip all three of SMGs, Assault Rifles, and Shotguns; on Androids, it's generally best to default to giving them Shotguns. The main qualifier is that Epic Weapons are another wrinkle; say your squad has two Shotgun users, one SMG user, and one Rifle user. At that point you'll eventually have a spare Epic SMG and Epic Rifle, and will be upgrading SMGs and Rifles for your proper agents anyway, so you might want to give one Android the Epic SMG and the other the Epic Rifle because both Epic Shotguns are tied up on your main Shotgun agents.

But as far as your core agents, it's only a slight tilting of the quality scale. Like yeah, Axiom's early game would be a little weaker if he was equipped with an SMG instead of a Shotgun, but Godmother and Blueblood are the only agents sufficiently focused on their primary weapon that which one they're equipped with is a significant factor in their effectiveness more or less at all times.

As an aside, Shotguns are the most blatant weapon about AI usage being very different from your usage, since enemies having flat Aim means enemy Shotgun wielders are alarmingly reliable at hitting no matter how far away they are. As Shotgun-wielding enemies are generally more damaging than non-Shotgun-wielding enemies, just as with your own weapons, this means enemy Shotgun wielders tend to be high priority targets. Most Mutons fall under this banner, but a few enemies have variable loadouts with a Shotgun as one option -and unfortunately this is easy to overlook as being a mechanic at all, in part because the game provides no UI cues. (ie the game won't label a Shrike Trooper who has a Shotgun as 'Shotgun Trooper' when targeting them, or the like)

This isn't too big of an issue overall given, again, the short ranges the game tends to operate at, but it does mean you shouldn't bother to move an agent further away on the idea that a Shotgunner will be less likely to hit them or less likely to target them due to being less likely to hit them. If it doesn't break line of sight/fire outright or get them into better Cover, it won't help at all. It's an awkward bit of experimentation, and I hope that if XCOM 3 returns to variable enemy loadouts that it either has enemy accuracy affected by range or at least is more careful to avoid jank like 'enemy Shotguns are 100% better than enemy non-Shotguns'.

Pistol

3-4 damage base

+21 Aim at point-blank, starts gaining Aim 18 tiles out.

6 ammo

Used by: Cherub, Blueblood.

Slightly worse damage than an SMG, but 50% more ammo. As it only loses 1 point of maximum damage, the drop in damage performance is less than you might expect, but on the other hand agents by default don't go through ammo particularly quickly so the ammo advantage is even less important on Cherub. On Blueblood it starts out keeping his core strength more meaningfully a strength, and then largely stops mattering once he unlocks infinite free reloads. Admittedly this is in part due to bugs, as Faceoff isn't always properly bounded by ammo and all...

Enemy Pistols, it should be noted, have their own bugginess in regards to ammo, and it's pretty similar to the bugginess with ammo on your own Pistols; 'on paper' enemy Pistols have a maximum of 6 ammo, just like your Pistols. In practice, the game is buggily inconsistent when it comes to stuff like ammo draining effects, where throwing a Cease Fire Grenade at a Pistol-equipped enemy will announce that their weapon was disabled... and sometimes they'll reload before firing when their turn comes around, while other times they'll apparently still have ammo available, such as moving and firing, or in the case of a Shrike Hitman still taking an opportunistic shot at somebody entering their Overwatch radius. Similarly, if you have Verge use Battle Madness on a Pistol-equipped enemy whose weapon should be out of ammo, they might reload, or they might take a shot, with no way to tell beforehand.

I assume this is to do with Pistols in XCOM 2 having unlimited ammo, where Chimera Squad didn't catch all the code that plays into Pistols behaving differently from other weapons, but whatever the reason for it you should basically always assume the worst possibility when dealing with enemy Pistol-users; assume they have ammo if that means they can shoot you, assume they're out of ammo if having no ammo would make Battle Madness a waste, etc.

Pangolin Gauntlets

3-4 damage base

Melee weapon, thus unlimited ammo

Used by: Zephyr.

The only weapon your squad uses that no enemy has a version of. I mean, you can argue that various melee enemies are clearly equivalent, but no enemy is supposed to be fighting with Pangolin Gauntlets, and indeed if there were Epic Pangolin Gauntlets there's no enemy that could smoothly swap them onto their model and make it work; Sacred Coil's Ronin are slashing people, not punching people, for example, while the assorted melee Mutons obviously couldn't wear gloves that smoothly fit onto Zephyr's hands. (Even leaving aside that not all of them are hitting people with their fists)

It's also, unfortunately, a notable part of Zephyr's problems staying competitive, since the Pangolin Gauntlets can never be upgraded and don't get Epic Weapon versions, all while sharing with Pistols the worst base damage of player weaponry. I don't really get why they were given such a poor base damage given all that; even just one more base damage would still leave Zephyr behind in the long haul but at least reduce how much this was true and give her a bit of a stronger early game, as well as reduce how much it hurts her that Impact Frames exist.

But I've already belabored this point under Zephyr herself, so not much point to repeating it here. I've mostly got this commentary here for the probability of readers just googling stuff and finding this page without context; yes, Pangolin Gauntlets don't upgrade and don't have Epic Weapons, you're not just overlooking the option or something. If you're willing to turn to mods, there is a mod that adds upgrades for Gauntlets and a different mod that adds an Epic Gauntlet. So that's something, if you like Zephyr and are frustrated by how understrength she is.

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Next time, we move on to Epic Weapons.

See you then.