This sort of thinking is absolutely ridiculous.

I'm all for having weapons fall into a race's design philosophy, but that doesn't mean that a race entirely forgoes an entire role...


For an illustration of my point, lets look at the other game that uses these races that DOES have all the weapons fleshed out. EVE.

Caldari do have weapons that work well at long range. Many of their ships work well with railguns, or for PVE, cruise missiles. However, they still have close range brawlers. The harpy, or eagle with blasters. The hookbill or raven with short range missiles (rockets or torps). They are known to have relatively slow and tanky ships, but still have ships that are better suited to lighter tank and skirmishing like the cerberus. Caldari are known for a general lack of drones. But they still have a carrier and a supercarrier.

Gallente have weapons that work well at short range. The hyperion, talos, or thorax come to mind. However they have ships which are very well suited to long range. Sentry-dominix, megathron, and rail proteus come to mind. Gallente, they're armour tankers right? Yes they are. But that doesn't stop an ishtar or arazu from sporting shield tanks.

Minmatar are projectiles, skirmishing, shields right? Yep, the tempest, vagabond or vagabond fit that philosophy very nicely. But the maelstrom is most certainly a brawler, the typhoon fits missiles, and the rupture armour tanks. They may have fast ships that hit hard and fade away, but that doesn't stop them from having a dreadnought to fill the role.

Amarr certainly. They are the most defined right? Lasers, armour, brawling, tanky. shiny hulls. Yep, the apocalypse or the zealot fit this perfectly. But the Curse is a shield tanked drone boat. The sacrilege shoots nothing but missiles, and the oracle often skirmishes with a shield tank.


What am I trying to say?

1) Everything a particular race uses doesn't necessarily need to fit into one specific niche. All races should be viable at all battlefield tasks. Races can have items or weapons that may fall outside of what their general design philosophy is.

2) Racial balancing means that while all races might have a viable sniper, the caldari sniper might be able to out-damage them at extreme range, or the gallente shotgun may have the most damage at extreme close ranges.

3) If you need a lore reason for having a gallente sniper rifle... do you really think Gallente generals have completely overlooked the advantages of having snipers? Or caldari ones the advantages of close-range weapons?