Weapon Design

Status: Working

Purpose

Weapon archetypes are defined by the combat questions they answer, not by a requirement that every familiar gun category ship. A new archetype earns its place only when it creates a new decision in movement, timing, range, setup, payoff, or build construction.

Shared design rules

Every weapon must establish:

its range and positional role;
its primary firing rhythm;
a meaningful secondary function;
a reload-equivalent action;
whether it requires one hand or two;
its strongest affix interactions;
the enemy or encounter problem it solves;
a readable silhouette and drop identity.

Reload is always a verb. Weapons without conventional magazines may vent, charge, cycle, transform, consume a resource, expose a weak state, or trigger an item-specific rule.

Baseline firearms

Automatic or bullet-hose weapon
Burst-fire weapon
Semi-automatic weapon
Bolt-action or lever-action weapon
Single-shot weapon
Shotgun or blunderbuss
Multi-barrel weapon
Handheld cannon

These provide the most legible starting rhythms and should establish the baseline against which stranger weapons are understood.

Payload weapons

Specialized shell launcher
Rocket or missile launcher
Stake, spike, or harpoon launcher
Disc thrower
Bow, crossbow, or sling
Thrown or returning weapon

Payload weapons generally trade flexibility or sustained fire for a decisive spatial or timing commitment.

Energy and field weapons

Beam weapon
Charge weapon
Spin-up cannon
Wave emitter
Impulse or sound cannon
Arc, chain, or area field

These should alter tracking, exposure time, charge discipline, crowd geometry, or the relationship between the wielder and the environment.

Fluid and biological weapons

Liquid or vapor pump
Grown-projectile weapon
Retractable tendril
Spore, bloom, or swarm delivery system
Living-reservoir weapon

These are opportunities for buildup, contamination, persistent states, ammunition that behaves like a living process, and weapons that visibly suffer or transform.

Deployed weapons

Trap
Turret
Drone or companion weapon
Mine or remote charge
Persistent-hazard projector

These convert weapon use into territorial control and should remain compatible with the game’s fast first-person rhythm rather than turning combat into passive waiting.

One-handed and two-handed commitment

A weapon belongs inside the two-set loadout model:

one two-handed weapon, or
two one-handed weapons.

Two-handed weapons should justify occupying the whole set through force, reach, defense, an unusually strong secondary function, or a distinctive casting or payload role. One-handed weapons gain value through pairing and cross-weapon interaction.

Optic link and secondary functions

True aiming belongs to the weapon’s optic link rather than a generic camera zoom. A weapon may instead use its secondary input for mode changes, detonation, targeting, charge release, field shaping, or another identity-defining action.

Dinim and affixes

Affixes should change verbs rather than merely raising damage. Useful directions include:

ricochet;
bloom;
accuse;
vitrify;
echo;
consume;
reveal.

The weapon’s original function must remain readable beneath corruption. The strongest affixes create new loops with movement, Will skills, Manual skills, Titles, sockets, and enemy states.

Named weapons

Named weapons have fixed identities and build-defining rules. They are exceptional authored discoveries rather than routine rewards from repeatedly farming story bosses.

Vertical-slice prototype priority

Begin with two sharply contrasting archetypes:

a readable semi-automatic or automatic gun;
a slower two-handed payload weapon with a strong secondary function.

Additional archetypes should be added only when testing shows they create a genuinely new combat decision.

Open questions

Which two exact archetypes form the vertical-slice pair?
What is the minimum set of baseline weapons needed to support meaningful loot variation?
Which archetypes are appropriate for one-handed pairing?
How many secondary-function families can remain readable on controller inputs?
Which biological and field weapons belong to normal drops, named items, or transformations?