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yeah, I see what you mean, and I understand the intent of keeping some sort of game balance, but it still feels like a grenade launcher should be more powerful than a service pistol, which isn't the case right now.
Plus, I'm not sure a grenade launcher being too deadly...is a bad thing? Like, one would kind of expect that, right? It's in the hands of the GM to handle those powerful weapons accordingly. Like, you don't make the Alien less deadly to give the players a fighting chance, because that would break the idea of the Alien being a living nightmare, which you want to preserve.
Also, the Harpoon gun does damage 1, but both the bolt gun and the Cutting Torch do damage 3. That does not feel consistent...at all. It feels like those two items should do damage 1 as well. It might be ruled they do Damage 3 against structures and 1 against organic opponents or something similar, and that would keep some sort of external logic and internal coherence with the game.

I despise the Cutting Torch as written as a weapon. I believe my current solution is that it is Attack -2 DMG 3 with Armor Piercing requiring a stunt. This makes it a fairly clumsy weapon in a fistfight, but if you can pin a target before applying its damage, it can do REALLY nasty damage. It can only be used at Engaged Range.

The Bolt Gun I currently keep at an Attack +0 DMG 3 at Engaged (using CLOSE COMBAT for the roll), Attack -1 DMG 2 at Short (using RANGED COMBAT for the roll). Using these stats, it can be a pretty punishing weapon, but remember it doesn't autoload and effectively can only be fired once every other round.

Just my 2 cents. Really interested in your opinion, though.

yeah, I see what you mean, and I understand the intent of keeping some sort of game balance, but it still feels like a grenade launcher should be more powerful than a service pistol, which isn't the case right now.
Plus, I'm not sure a grenade launcher being too deadly...is a bad thing? Like, one would kind of expect that, right? It's in the hands of the GM to handle those powerful weapons accordingly. Like, you don't make the Alien less deadly to give the players a fighting chance, because that would break the idea of the Alien being a living nightmare, which you want to preserve.
Also, the Harpoon gun does damage 1, but both the bolt gun and the Cutting Torch do damage 3. That does not feel consistent...at all. It feels like those two items should do damage 1 as well. It might be ruled they do Damage 3 against structures and 1 against organic opponents or something similar, and that would keep some sort of external logic and internal coherence with the game.

Just my 2 cents. Really interested in your opinion, though.

I must admit that I was disappointed with the weapon damage in Evolved. A service pistol firing 9mm ball does the same damage as an M41A Pulse Rifle (10×24 mm armor-piercing explosive rounds), and a .375 handgun does even more damage? To me, it makes no sense whatsoever.

The whole “it is Alien, not Aliens” argument doesn’t make sense to me either—both are canon, and the game should reflect that. Just make the military weapons much more dangerous, or make the consequences of punching holes in a Xeno far more severe. I think that may have been one of the reasons they avoided it in Alien. That being said, I don’t think the Year Zero engine is the best system to reflect this.

Arthur, then don’t. I’m not forcing you to argue or reply to anything. I’ve been checking the forum now and then since Evolved came out, and I haven’t seen this brought up.

Arthur, I don’t see anyone in this thread raising concerns about a service pistol having the same damage as a pulse rifle, or the magnum dealing more damage than a pulse rifle.
To me, that would be like a dagger in Forbidden Lands doing as much damage as a claymore, or a short sword dealing more damage. But hey, if it works for you, then fine.
As for Alien, not Aliens: I’ve been trying to fix this for a while now, but to me it just highlights one of the weaknesses of the Year Zero system. Damage is pretty much static, or close to it, and that works fine for near-peer combat—maybe not so much when there are significant differences between adversaries.
If we raise the damage of military weapons by a few points, they become more dangerous to the xenos—but then you would almost always kill human targets, and since PCs are human, that would make military weapons effectively unusable by NPCs.
Blade Runner had some pretty good ideas around critical hits, and when I got that, I tried to adapt it—but it ended up being a lot of work.
I don’t really understand why military weapons are included in the game at all. One approach would be to say that “Aliens” is outside the scope of this game and simply not include Colonial Marines or the M41A. In my gaming group, we played Chariot of the Gods, and when the PCs got hold of an M41A, I could see the excitement—this was an iconic sci-fi weapon, and the players had expectations about what would happen when they used it—only to be met with disappointment. It stripped 1 or 2 health from an abomination before running out of ammo.
The best success I’ve had with the Alien RPG has been with near-peer threats, either humans or Resident Evil–style Black Goo “zombies.”
But in the end, if the system doesn’t work for us, we’ll just move on. That’s what happened to my group.

I must admit that I was disappointed with the weapon damage in Evolved. A service pistol firing 9mm ball does the same damage as an M41A Pulse Rifle (10×24 mm armor-piercing explosive rounds), and a .375 handgun does even more damage? To me, it makes no sense whatsoever.

The whole “it is Alien, not Aliens” argument doesn’t make sense to me either—both are canon, and the game should reflect that. Just make the military weapons much more dangerous, or make the consequences of punching holes in a Xeno far more severe. I think that may have been one of the reasons they avoided it in Alien. That being said, I don’t think the Year Zero engine is the best system to reflect this.