Replacing spawn weapons

I don't like the idea. Or rather, parts of it.

1.: Xonotic already has a good weapon system. Or at least, that's what I've heard of months ago, when we released 0.6. Totally changing almost all the weapons right now seems pretty stupid for me, we're too much further into development now. Also, you'll TOTALLY BREAK EXISTING OFFICIAL AND 3RD PARTY MAPS.

2.: Transformed laser = Pulse gun?
For the primary, it somehow makes sence. However, moving the melee to secondary is imho a bad idea mainly for the reasons:

-Laserjumping will become now a lot less used because of the higher refire time or charge or whatever you call it. However this is a key element of Xonotic movement, and one distinctive heritage from Nexuiz.

-For a fast paced game like Xonotic, a charging up gun sounds stupid, it'll make the game become slower. Remember the Nex? It got the charge for this very reason, to slow it down! Also, a melee attack just HAS to be fast, because that's why it's so damn powerful: if you add charge to a melee, you'll be easily predicted.

-You'll remove the fast weaponswitch to the last used gun. There was a short time, when Nexuiz had this too (secondary was autolaserjump), but people got so much used to the weaponswitch ability, that it had to be reverted. True story.

- As you didn't mention, I assume that slapping with the shotgun aka. "trouting" will be removed from the game. I'd totally miss that, it added so much fun to the game! I like Xonotic to be funny too! OR, you'll like to integrate slapping to all guns, but that'd mean another bind. Not everybody has a mouse made for WoW with 32+ buttons on it.

-You say you want to simplify things. Read this out loud:

OR, we need to make some kind of charging mechanism, i.e.: If you press secondary quickly, it does high force and low damage (good for jumping)... but if you hold it in, it does high damage (good for melee)

So, charging + multiple ways of clicks? How is this simple? People were raging all around before the automatic charging up of the Nex, because it was C O N F U S I N G... (yeah, wtf on that, but still).

-An energy balster type of this weapon would make the new, awesome laser model totally useless, as it really doesn't fit this role.

TBH. I don't think this is the way you should try to further tweak the weapon balance. I think the main problem doesn't lie in the spawn weapons, but rather in the numerous (and yes, sometimes useless and redundant) pickup weapons. I'd present my ideas about that, but as this is purely about the spawn weapons, I'll present those when the time has come for them.

In short: DON'T EFFIN TOUCH THE SHOTGUN AND THE LASER YOU BASTERD!