Because nobody has lots of points in their own weapon perk in early game it really doesn't matter much which pipe weapon you use. Most players will probably craft a pipe machine gun or at max a pipe shotgun, or whatever ammo they have found. Sadly the pipe machine gun is so much better than any other pipe weapon there is no question what to take
Pipe Machinegun has the benefit of being full-auto, but 7.62 is a LOT rarer than 9mm early on.
A pipe revolver seems more useful in general because it's still a gun, it still kills at range and has multiple shots before it's very slow pipe-tier reload (unlike the pipe shotgun and rifle) but you can actually acquire bullets for it.
Personally, (and I've suggested this before) i'd like for the pipe-tier robot-turret weapon to be a projectile-weapon, (every other stat gets a melee and a ranged weapon. Robot-turrets being both means that Int is gimped early on here)
Something like a nailgun, perhaps? or a handheld dart-launcher? (using dart-trap ammo?)
Nerf it's function compared to the actual robotic turret. Maybe it can only shoot forwards and doesn't track enemies? (It detects enemies and shoots, but cannot swivel and aim at them?)
When held, make it like the robot-turret. Hard to aim, with no real sights, but make the ammo fairly cheap to make (cheaper than real bullets, but not trivial, changing junk-ammo to require lead instead of iron was a clever move. It makes it non-infinate, but still cheaper than real ammo.)
On a semi-related note, is anybody else holding off on making higher-grade low-tier gear?
To be clear on what that means, If I can make a tier 5 pipe rifle but only a tier 1 hunting rifle, i'd probably stick with the pipe weapon even though it's technically inferior.
It's supposed to be a straight upgrade, but the 'real' gun isn't actually noticeably better, it uses a fairly significant amount of resources (duct-tape mostly) and it doesn't have any mod-slots so I might not even be able to keep my stuff on it.
Overall, making the 'best' gun/armour/melee weapon/tool that you can make often feels like a poor move?
Maybe if the mod-slots were changed so that the tiers (junk, iron, steel) had diffrent amounts instead of it being determined by quality-tier (level 1, level 2, level 3)
Or perhaps the number of mods you could assign to a gun scaled with your skill level (weapon skill or magazines read?) That way the tier (colour) of your weapon would denote it's durability and damage-stats, but not how many scopes and flashlights you can clamp onto it?
(... we need better nomenclature than using 'tier' for both material (pipe, iron, steel) and colour. (grey, brown, orange, green, blue, purple)
Anyway, with some weapons the function changes enough that it's semi-worth it. (the lever action rifle is such a big upgrade over the hunting rifle just for it's magazine size that even a low-tier one is worth getting right away) but most of the time it doesn't.
A high-tier pipe machinegun is probably more useful than a trash-tier AK.
A blue/purple pipe revolver is almost as good as a grey handgun (especially if you have limited ammo)
T5 leather armour or T1 military?
T5 iron or T1 steel?
The military/steel has better stats than the previous tier of armour, but by the time you can make steel armour you probably have a lot of mods to put in it, which you can't now.
Basically, upgrading feels like a trade-off, and it doesn't feel like it
should.
Edit:
Idea. Create a system to allow players to directly upgrade a low-quality item into a higher-quality one by adding more material once you have the appropriate skill level.
So you don't have to hold off on building that Magnum just because you can only build a crappy one. You make your crappy one right away and as you gain more handgun skill, you can take the magnum that you have and pour more steel and handgun parts into it to improve it.
Have this be done through the modification menu, I guess.
This way you never need to hold off on making the best stuff you can, just because "I'll be able to make an even better version soon."
... I guess you could just make crafted items scrap for 100% of their initial material investment too, but that's a little boring.
... on second thought, this doesn't actually solve the mod-slot problem. It does prevent you from wasting materials tho.
