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Weapons and Ammo

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Weapons in Last Frontier are not just “damage numbers.” A gun’s class determines which skill drives it, how it fires, what ammo it needs, and who it’s effective against. Let’s go through it in order: weapon classes, fire modes, and ammunition.

Weapon classes

Every weapon is tied to a single combat skill — that’s what determines its accuracy and the abilities available in its branch. There are currently four classes in the game:

  • Light weapons — pistols, rifles, shotguns, such as the “PVK” rifle and the SEC M-19/05 pistol. This branch boosts accuracy, reloading, and shooting on the move.
  • Heavy weapons — machine guns and energy weapons: the minigun, the laser rifle. It comes into its own through burst control and suppression.
  • Melee — bladed and blunt weapons, such as the bayonet knife. It works through damage, penetration, bleeding, and critical strikes.
  • Explosives — grenades, mines, and charges (the RPU-5 grenade). This branch is about blast radius, secondary effects, and working with mines.

Important: weapons are not locked behind character level. Progress is expressed through skill checks, unlocked abilities, access to recipes and tools, rarity, price, weight, reliability, and ammunition. A high level on its own doesn’t “hand you” a better gun.

Damage and its type

Once a shot has passed the accuracy and evasion checks, damage is calculated deterministically — not by a random roll, but as the rounded-up midpoint of the weapon’s range, multiplied by the number of hits.

Every weapon has a damage type: physical, energy, fire, poison, or radiation. Most firearms and melee weapons deal physical damage; the laser rifle hits with energy. This matters because a target’s armor and resistances work by type: a gun that quickly tears through a weak beast may do almost nothing against a target protected specifically from that type.

Fire modes

Three modes are actually implemented: auto, single, and burst. Which of them are available is set by the gun itself: the “PVK” can do single and burst, while the SEC M-19/05 and the “Slug” (a homemade shotgun) — single only.

Burst is pressure, but it isn’t free:

  • Rounds are grouped into tracer lines and can hit several targets along the line.
  • In exchange, this mode pays a fixed accuracy penalty (−25 by default), unless the fighter has an ability that removes it.
  • A burst usually takes more time than a single shot.

A single shot and ordinary rounds hit several enemies at once only if the ammunition has the pass-through property.

Ammunition and caliber

Firearms and energy weapons don’t just fire “in general”: each needs its own caliber. The weapon specifies the required caliber, and the round carries its own — and the two must match. For example, the “PVK” requires a 7.62 mm round; the laser rifle runs on batteries.

  • Magazine capacity is set by the weapon: 30 for the “PVK,” 6 for the SEC M-19/05, 100 for the minigun.
  • Ammo use per shot depends on the weapon and the mode. The “PVK” uses one round in single mode and five per burst; the minigun — 20 per burst.

Armor-piercing rounds

Some ammunition is armor-piercing — for example the “7.62mm BB/A cartridge” next to the ordinary “7.62mm A cartridge.” Such a round provides a high penetration score: if total penetration reaches the threshold (25 by default), the contribution of worn armor to defense is ignored.

But penetration is not a “defense off switch.” It only bypasses armor as an item; the target’s own resistances and its vulnerabilities to a specific damage type remain. The armor-piercing approach is good against thick armor, but it doesn’t settle the question of what exactly you intend to finish the target off with.

A gun’s accuracy and reliability

Every weapon has its own accuracy modifier: for precise guns it’s zero, for crude ones it’s negative. For the “PVK” it’s −30, for the homemade “Slug” it’s −50, and you feel it. Accuracy is also affected by distance, the shooter’s perception, movement, the condition of the hands, and the chosen aim zone.

Weapons wear down. Wear does not change damage or reliability until the breakage threshold — but a broken gun automatically moves to the inventory, and it can’t be equipped until you repair it. A shot may also fail to go off: out of ammo, the weapon is broken, or it has jammed — each case stops the attack. A jam is cleared by reloading or unloading.

The takeaway is simple: pick your weapon and ammo to match the enemy, not your habit. If a fight feels like it’s dragging on, the problem often isn’t your character but the wrong tool for that target.