Root weapons combine many of the worst gameplay mechanics

Couldn't agree more.
Pix's nails in the coffin just got 6 inches longer.

Who said coffin? Theyre driving nails into a carcass.

I certainly feel they missed many good opportunities.

Modules to speed up beacon capture, or extend the range of beacon capture would be good. (A module that lets you win a contested beacon would be interesting as well)

Modules to speed up reloading would be great for built hose builds.

Modules that reduce the range weapons lock into you, or reduce the range at which you can be targeted (and vice-versa) would add a tactical element, as would.

A module to block hydra spam would make them millions...

My approach is quite different.

With a small closed set deterministic variables you have a small tree of fully predictable outcomes, easy to learn with practice. The more variables and randomness you have the more skill it takes.

What's easier? Firing in a arrow in a fully secluded environment with every variable fixed or out in the open? Take the same archer and put him in a sterilized environment and then out in the open with very very weak wind. What's easier for him? Out there he has less control of the situation. There are variables he can't completely predict. There is the element of chance;a small burst of wind and it will affect the arrows course.

I don't think less control on a large set of outcomes produced by stochastic variables, demands less skill than full control on a small set of deterministic variables. On the contrary. Just my view of things.

Also, perhaps they can help. I'am following a 0 dash 0 shock approach and trying hard not to give in, by using stealth. Perhaps spy which is a watered down version of stealth could help my Inquisitor. Freezing the chickens is also welcome.

In fact I believe many older weapons will get a major buff out of this.

Each time you fire that thunder or tulu that huge area covered may not be damaged significantly.by it will count as a hit. This means they are subject to a probability of getting freezed. Noricum ? Oh yeah !!! You cover that area in front of me with your noricum and each chicken passing may get freezed. Splash and AOE weapons will be buffed indirectly immensely.

You can argue that shock traverses but it's one hit. One roll of the die. Splash and AOE are many minor ones all the time. Many roles of the dices Perhaps we can look into it from a positive angle.

Interesting perspective.
A very different set of skills will be required to compete, compared to what skills are needed now. The fact is that, War Robots strays from its roots more and more with each update.

I'm still not entirely convinced about chance-reliant abilities and how skill is affected. To me it seems that, wherever there is an element of chance and randomness, skill is watered down. More so, in a competetive environment. How do you determine a winner in an archery contest, if every player has slightly different environments to deal with?

I would go for the magnitude of randomness. 5 Beaufort now and 5 Beaufort in 10 minutes from now ain't the same, but I would consider them to cause the same "magnitude" of randomness, to the two different archers.

I would also stay in my car, when they started shooting   .

I had assumed that the module would take up a weapon slot, to balance it out slightly.

How naive of me :-(

If I get frozen by a ST chain hit, then I imagine I'll rage quit / quit out of disgust.

But I'll stay optimistic until I see it all in action ... Or um, inaction as the case may be.

Oh, and since when was 「poopie」 a bad word? Should I change it to poopoohead?

This will certainly be the nail in the coffin. Looking forward to seeing what happens when I log back in after months of inactivity.

Tf2, Overwatch, and RPGs have common factors towards their balance with RNG, the biggest one being character/item classes and attributes.

In other mech games, hitstun is a thing, but hitstun only applies with certain weapons, and bots usually have an attribute that determines their resistance to it.

Energized ammo is adding hitstun at random chance to every weapon on a bot that can use the module, for a price.

I'll use the Armored core as an example because it's the most defined.

Grenade launchers, railguns, shotguns and heavy sniper weapons have high hitstun. They fire intermittently, and have a high probability of missing without proper positioning and timing, or, by way of shotguns, deal minimum damage outside of melee range. These weapons also "stun" the wielder with recoil if the user does not have enough stability.

Energy weapons,plasma weapons and machine guns have little to no hitstun, they deal massive chip damage, or damage that passes certain defense types. These weapons also have minimal recoil, making them more consistent damage dealers.

Heavier bots have leg parts with higher stability, allowing them to use weapons that have higher recoil and hitstun, but they are more vulnerable to enemy mechs within melee range, as their turn speed and maneuverability suffer for the firepower they're carrying.

Lighter bots are more prone to hitstun, but have tools to EVADE THE ATTACK ALTOGETHER. They are also limited in their choices of high impact weapons, instead reliant on melee and consistent damage to take advantage of enemy movements.

What "energized ammo" does, it put a random, high impact hitstun, on anything and everything, with the other bot's composition having no say in whether or not they are completely immobilized.

In RPG's, hero shooters, and MoBAs, stun, and other movement affecting abilities are balanced into the character's toolset as a whole. Stun characters have other restrictions. Whereas "energized Ammo" is just adding stun to DpS rollouts.

As for the implimentation of module abilities in other games.

Tf2 and Overwatch don't lock these things behind paywalls, they are features of specific characters with specific strengths and weaknesses.

RpGs tend to lock these things behind time based floodgates, but, it only costs $20 to buy a character up to a useable level in something like WoW, where you're playing with a single avatar at any given time, where the character class is free(though gear is not), where the biggest source of fun in the game is grinding out the scenarios and coordinating with other players to do so.
In War Robots, it's a couple of hundred dollars to get a single hangar to a non-fodder level, and that gear is bound to fall behind the power curve in a few months after purchase, grinding is miserable as it's only PvP, and the MM is specifically designed to trash you until you spend money. The floodgate for power only truly opens up after spending thousands of dollars, with the timer on said floodgate spanning YEARS.

As a warhammer 40k and battletech player, I would disagree a game with a dice is a sign of bad design. Even if you have bad rolls, good enough strategy can overcome it. It is simply a matter of whether you can play with the odds or not. But it is only the case when most of the gameplay is based on RNG, and not only specific parts of it, or in this case, with only one thing that actually uses it.

No worries. We know that Pix will balance it all out. Soon we will have multiple test server weekends, where they fine tune and tweak the mechanics so that there is acceptable attrition of free player whale food levels, compared to revenue stream generated by whales getting the components.

The revenue stream is crashing though.

They're making less money now that any point since I began playing the game according to this: thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/9124/walking-war-robots/

It works fine in Warhammer and Battletech and most board games. It isn't bad design there because those are strategic games. You're not actually playing each individual soldier or Mech, so the variation of those individuals is decided by rolls of a dice.

It is bad design when applied to something you actually play with your body, let's use basketball as an example. Should the free throw count? Flip a coin!?... why not just actually take the shot and find out?

You don't need that kind of chance, when you can actually determine it with your own play. We use our hands to precisely control the robot, dice have no roll here. Pun intended. This one of the nice things about Battle of Titans... why did his weapon blow off? Because someone shot at it. Why did he take leg damage? Because someone hit his leg. Those things take skill and involve counterplay. It isn't random like in War Robots when you are corner shooting and the weapon that gets blown off is the one behind cover, not the one you are corner shooting with.