Part 16

Pulse Rifle: Keep moving when using the secondary beam. It's accurate, ammo-efficient, and deals high damage, becoming an instant-death weapon with UDamage. It's ideal for small, tight maps. Use secondary fire to draw on walls to intimidate opponents.

Countering the Pulse Rifle: Its primary fire is easy to avoid. If within range of the secondary fire, stay still while returning fire to reduce its damage-per-second (DPS) due to the sawing effect. Bots always use secondary fire when in range, switching to primary only when out of range. Backing away out of range nerfs the weapon when used by enemies.

Ripper (Class: All-Purpose): The primary offensive blades ricochet off surfaces until ruined or hitting another player. They can score headshots (157 damage, enough to remove a shield-belt in one shot) but are too slow for accurate long-range use. They can create a useful barrier at bottlenecks by bouncing off walls, but ammo depletes quickly and they do no splash damage. They can cause self-damage if they bounce back. The blades can damage targets in otherwise unreachable places, especially in confined areas, as they don't disappear until hitting enough surfaces, theoretically allowing them to hit any spot from any other spot.

Ripper Secondary Fire: This acts like a weaker, faster rocket that cannot home in. It can be fired at an enemy's feet for splash damage, to bounce them into hazards (useful on maps like DM-Phobos), or at a teammate's feet to propel them forward. Damage is low, and even a direct hit plus splash is poor for killing enemies or attacking AS (Assault) objectives.

Ripper Mobility: You can use the secondary ripper blades to launch yourself a short distance or height, similar to a hammer-jump but with less health cost.

Countering the Ripper: Crouch to avoid direct hits and ricochets. If an opponent is firing directly at you, crawl in circles while returning fire to maintain a low profile against direct hits, bounces, and headshots. The ripper is most effective when the user is on the same level as the target; get to higher or lower ground to minimize risk.

Ripper-shots: The ripper can perform ripper-shots, useful in AS maps (except High Speed and Overlord). This involves firing primary blades at specific spots to make them bounce at angles to destroy an objective without getting close. Accuracy can be extremely high, varying with screen resolution and the hand you're holding the weapon in (center-hand or right-hand). In the GOTY (Game Of The Year) version, go to Preferences > HUD (heads-up display — the on-screen icons showing health, ammo and the minimap) > Always Center Crosshair to eliminate this problem. Ripper-shots can be achieved in single-player on AS-Frigate, AS-Rook, AS-Mazon, and AS-OceanFloor.

Minigun (Class: Offense): The primary mode is more accurate, but the secondary mode is faster and should be used unless firing over long distances. It takes a brief moment to spin up, so it cannot be used as a twitch weapon.