Okay, so after enjoying the hell out of the story, pulling my hair out in quite a few crucible matches, and blasting through Strikes with plenty of guardians, and grinding like mad to Light level 25, I've come to the opinion that it feels there is a weapon or two missing from our Guardian's armoury; Railguns. As a quick note for those who do not know, a railgun, coilgun, mass driver -while all operated and built differently- fall under the same design idea of launching a projectile at very high speeds with the use of electromagnets. For a little more in-depth explanation and some cool pictures, you can always check out the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun]Wikipedia[/url] page for some more info. It's usually at least a little bit accurate. Anyway, onto the details! Now, bear with this as it's a bit of a stretch to make the connections. With a bit of examination of their performance and stats, though, it may be a little easier to follow. So, as everyone know's there's four types of primary weapons; assault rifles, pulse rifles**, scout rifles, and hand cannons. Next onto the special weapons, we have the shotgun, fusion rifle, and sniper rifle. Finally, heavy weapons only has two choices to pick from; rocket launchers or machine guns. If you section off these weapons into a 'progress tree' of sorts, it ends up looking like this: [b]Assault Rifle ► Shotgun ► Machine Gun Pulse Rifle ► Fusion Rifle ► ??? Scout Rifle ► Sniper Rifle ► ??? Hand Cannon ► ??? ► Rocket Launcher[/b] Why bundle the shotgun with the assault rifles and machines guns? All three are closer-range weapons with higher rates of fire than their competition. What connection could a hand cannon and rocket launcher possibly share? Aside from the fact they're both very slow firing in relation to their competition and reward smart, accurate play... There really isn't much. Told you it was a stretch. Why are there only two heavy weapons? Only Bungie knows it seems, but an additional choice wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. Variety, after all, is the spice of life. So, looking at this (poor example of a) progress-tree, one starts to feel that there are a few weapons that could be missing from the list. So, why not kill two birds with one stone? The railgun could neatly nestle into that tree right at the end for both the pulse rifle and scout rifles: Essentially acting as a powerful, long-range, accurate weapon with a long charge time. Certainly there are those who would revel in a third precision option to round out their guardian, myself included in their ranks. If added, the tree might end up looking something like this: [b]Assault Rifle ► Shotgun ► Machine Gun Pulse Rifle ► Fusion Rifle ▼ Mass Driver Scout Rifle ► Sniper Rifle ▲ Mass Driver Hand Cannon ► ??? ► Rocket Launcher[/b] Now an idea is fine and dandy on it's own, but without some form of comparison or weapon statistics one is left in the dark to guess how it might look and perform. As a quick example we'll take two legendary-quality, 20th level, heavy weapons quite a few Guardians have likely seen and then show an example of a Railgun. As there's no definitive number when checking a weapon's stats, this reference will use a one-to-ten scale based of the weapons base stats (no upgrades), a one on the scale being the lowest a stat can be. [b]Rocket Launcher[/b] Unfriendly Giant [i]"Unfriendly is really too harsh. He's just a bit shy."[/i] Damage: 248 Rate of Fire: 1 Blast Radius: 9 Velocity: 5 Stability: 6 Reload: 6 Magazine: 2 Kinetic Damage Upgrade options for this weapon are: Confined launch, soft launch, countermass, cluster bomb, fitted stock, single point sling, javelin, damage upgrade (x5) [b]Machine Gun[/b] Zombie Apocalypse WF47 [i]"Ready for one breed of armageddon."[/i] Damage: 248 Rate of Fire: 8 Impact: 4 Range: 3.66 Stability: 4 Reload: 3.99 Magazine: 43 Arc Damage Upgrade options for this weapon are: Accurized ballistics, linear compensator, soft ballistics, spray and play, high caliber rounds, hammer forged, flared magwell, feeding frenzy, upgrade damage (x5) As one can see from these two's stats, they perform in near opposite fashions from each other, yet neither is what could be called 'accurate'. Either it deals all of it's damage in a wide area, or one fire non-stop and hope the target drops. Now with both of those weapons here for comparison, let's look at how our new heavy weapon might play out. [b]Railgun / Mass Driver[/b] Whole Punch. [i]"I saw her nonchalantly aim at a skiff that had just dropped in. One shot. Punched a right through the thing end-to-end."[/i] Damage: 248 Rate of fire: 1 (Charge time of 2.5 seconds) Impact: 9.5 Range: 8 Stability: 3 Reload: 2 Magazine: 1 Void Damage Upgrade options for this weapon are: Sightsys SLS220, Longview SLR20, Tacsys SLS15, armor piercing rounds, Enhanced battery, fitted stock, speed reload, Explosive rounds, damage upgrade (x5) As an explanation for the stats above, Railguns/Mass Drivers would be Incredibly powerful, long-range weapons that have poor handling characteristics accompanied by painfully slow reloads and a charge long charge time before firing. While having some very apparent drawbacks, the ability to deal massive damage to a single target outside the range of both of the other heavy weapons balances out those weaknesses. Using it in PVE, one could deal incredible damage to bosses and other tougher targets if they're careful to aim, sacrificing the crowd control of the rocket launcher and the general-purpose use of the machine gun. Annnd that's really it. I'm open to suggestions on tweaking the idea, discussion, bickering over how a handcannon and rocket launcher are similar... Anything! I'd love for some feedback from some of the guys at Bungie, too but that's a snowball's chance in hell, honestly. Keep checking in every once in a while! I'll be updating this every now and then with improvements, and maybe some concepts for how the railguns/mass drivers could look when I get a chance. [i] **It's a Battle Rifle, hush up.[/i]