Glad to see I am not the only person who does this, then. I guess as the game develops we'll see a transition from side-scrolling platformer to strategy.

I can agree that the Dummies seem a bit durable.

On the flip side, if modeled after crash test dummies, they should be durable.
Being highly resistant to impacts and such, it seems they should also be resistant to some effect to bullets/projectiles, or otherwise not be effected as much from being riddled with holes.
If there was a weakness, I would make it to energy/flame type weapons. Make them 'burn' from such wounds, with little puffs of smoke and flames, being the Dummy version of 'bleeding'.
It also gives some better/additional reasons for why the Coalition has Flamers and Incendiary Grenades, and why the Ronin have Molotov Cocktails


More weapon/tool ideas, due to being bored and not having anything better to do... and I am not sure if these have been mentioned yet.
Warning: Long post to follow.


For the Ronin.
They have an RPC, so why not regular chainsaws for up close and personal work?
Their could be a 'normal' version, a longer/more powerful 'lumberjack' version, and a super version with a description like 'a turbo charged chainsaw with diamond tipped carbide/tungsten teeth'. Also, a cheap one, weaker, not to durable, when out of ammo, it 'breaks'.

A Ronin grenade launcher. Give them something like the M79 or M203 (both 40mm iirc). Grenade rounds explode on impact, no bounce, probably a little weaker and smaller blast radius than the Coalition/Dummy versions, and perhaps slightly better range to make up for their weaker power/smaller blast/no bounce/no delay of blast


For the Dummies
A jackhammer type tool. Improvised melee weapon, best suited for digging through stuff like rock, concrete, metal and armor, but the narrow area of effect making it almost as slow going through dirt, probably kick up a lot of dirt/debris bits in the process.

Dummy Sniper Rifle change. Change its appearance/sound. Make it look more like an over sized nail gun firing something like railroad spikes. Otherwise, it would still 'function' the same and have the same stats.

If possible, a weapon that takes advantage of dummy resistance to impacts. Perhaps something 'safe' for the dummies to fire, but dangerous/harmful/deadly for non-dummies to use.

For the Coalition
Another digger, similar to the Pulse Digger, but with a slightly longer and much more narrow area of effect, much better digging through dirt, a bit better against concrete, and very limited ability to dig through metal at a painfully slow rate. The narrow area of effect would require time to make a hole large enough for even a smaller soldier to get through a concrete wall.

A nasty idea for the Mauler Shotgun, have the spike balls explode like miniature grenades (very limited blast area) after a second or two. Either that, or give the spike balls better flight/range potential than a thrown sponge.


A few weapon/tool/bomb ideas that are up in the air as far as who could use them.

A heavy duty grenade launcher/portable mortar (60mm/66mm?). Have better power and range than a grenade launcher, shots explode on impact. Perhaps a (cheaper/weaker/slightly better ranged) Ronin response to the Uber Cannon.

Another weapon idea.
A LAAW. Basically, a one shot disposable rocket launcher. Small, cheap, packs a punch, focused blast made to punch through tough things. Give it a limited 'range' to the blast, to limit blasting huge/long holes in the ground with stray rockets.

A possibly unusual bomb/tool idea.
Basically a 'digging charge'. Basically an explosive device, for digging, clearing debris, etc. Limited effectiveness against concrete, useless against metal. Kick up dirt, but not 'mine' gold. A pair of variants could be possible, one with smaller blast more effective against tougher materials and limited effect against metal, and one with a larger blast, but next to useless against anything other than sand and debris, and not so effective against dirt, useless against packed dirt/rock/concrete/metal.

A claymore mine. Tricky part might be figuring out how to get it to go off in a specific direction, or otherwise to focus the blast in the direction of the enemy closest to it when it detonates. It could be as effective as having a few dozen shotgun shells going off, and should probably have a hefty price, akin to a C4 charge...
Might be suitable for either the Coalition, or for the Ronin.

A minigun of sorts.
The XM214 "Microgun" comes to mind to fit this role, a 6 barreled man portable minigun firing 5.56x45mm rounds at a rate up to 4,000 rounds per minute (variable, minimal was 400 rounds per minute).
Could either be a faster firing version of the Coalition Compact Assault Rifle, or else give the Ronin a cheaper/weaker alternative to the YAK4700... and possibly double as a ranged weed eater... Such a weapon would probably fit better with the Ronin, due to them already using other 'old' weapons.


It might also be nice to see variants of shotguns with slugs, or maybe a variant of the Mauler Shotgun that shoots explosive slugs, or even beanbag (chair) rounds.
Regular rocket/missile launchers with HEAP/HEAT type warheads (like the LAAW I mentioned) would also be interesting.
Perhaps a dedicated 'bunker buster', limited range, expensive, but good at blowing holes in doors and making alternative entrances in bunker walls.

If Cortex Command ever gets the ability to 'switch ammo types' for a single weapon, then it could allow for a few weapons to have different ammo types, rather than just making a duplicate of a gun that fires a different type of round/shot... but I guess that is more 'feature' than 'content', and so will have to wait for now.

Okay, I am done ranting for now...

@the last part:
Alt-fire can be done with lua.

Peacemaker ejects shell casings
/thread

That burn the terrain.

Back to actors:
I agree with those who said Dummy should withstand impacts better than bullets. Even with that done, though, the Dummies will still be a very potential faction. Look at the Dummy's arsenal, small but all highly effective weapons(except for the Destroyer), while the Ronin has a huge arsenal of redundant weapons.

Being used for impacts, and as an analogue for humans, they should be durable against impacts, and not bullets.

Their weapons should be unstable, or cumbersome because they are for testing things, not for actual combat.

hopefully

CC is just a sandbox right now, that is why everyone cheats for gold and the game is so difficult to play "normally"

there really isn't much strategy to it at all, it's like a Soldat clone but where everyone is a double-leg amputee

some "physics" elements of CC need to be ditched, it's not like real bodies act like a bunch of connected particles anyway

Yea, I was thinking of the theme of the Dummy weapons too. Coalition: Big guns, specialized weapons, Ronin: Antique weapons, cheap and numerous, Whitebots: Hightech, high quality (that's all that has been revealed), Undead: Weak (not joking).

Then there's the Dummies. At first I thought they were industrial, but considering the energy weapons, I'd say their theme is experimental too. Some of their weapons are unstable enough. Like the destroyer cannon's strange energy orb, or the repeater's tendency to hurt the user. But, they could be even more powerful and more unstable, just to strengthen the theme.

I think that the Undead should be fleshed out... Make them the class to use en mass. Mebbe deployable spawners and auto brain attack AI.

brain hunt mode currently makes actors attack the P1 brain, if data hasnt fixed that. they need more weapons though. pirate style, preferably. or at least old. catapults would be epic. ACrabs, preferably.
also, when are we going to see that necromancer from the moon?

Spoilers.

She can breath in space, how suspicious.

She can reanimate the dead.

Personally that's higher on my list.

i want her as my friend.
awesomesauce grif, thanks.

TLB, is there more metal and flesh and smoke and fire flying around in vanilla CC yet?