Topic on Talk:Weapon Guide

You are still limited by what you can loot, but you loot a lot of weapons before you can research very far down the tech tree, especially as tribals. You kill a lot more raiders than you have pawns, and scavenger and pirate gunners will make up a lot of early pirate raids. Outlanders with town guards too. And thats before things like opening caskets in ancient dangers, trading for weapons, getting caravans to kill enemies for you and looting any losses etc.

But new players also need to know what to choose - they'll have more options than they'll have pawns. Knowing the the HSMG is basically just a MP+ 1 quality until you hit MW is good to know when you're scavenging. But theres long term stuff too - if they're trying to decide between the BAs and the MPs they just looted, and they intend to use CSGs later on, picking the BAs means any defenses they build now that work with the BA won't work with their final choice.

Options open up once you get to Gas Op. At that point you can potentially start making the weapons you take into end game, or at least picking the branch of the research tree you want to go down to get your end game weapons. But do you build interim HSMGs while you wait, do you spec fully into HSMGs, do you go straight into CSGs, do you keep your looted ARs and skip HSMGs etc are relevant questions.