Assault rifle

The assault rifle is a weapon from Strife, the equivalent of Doom's chaingun. It fires three bullets with each shot unlike the chaingun's two. It can kill acolytes, stalkers and sentinels quickly, but it is not recommended against stronger foes. This is the same weapon used by acolytes and Front soldiers.

The rifle's accuracy is affected by the player's accuracy stat; continuous firing will cause shots to veer off target, so firing in short bursts is recommended. Specific bonuses like the accuracy upgrade can increase the accuracy rating to make continuous shots more effective. Using the targeter will show the maximum spread of the player's shots, represented by two yellow bars that draw closer together as accuracy improves.

Bullet clips are the ammo type used for this weapon. Each rifle gives 20 bullets when picked up - ammo also comes in the form of bullet clips (giving 10 bullets when found, or 5 when dropped by enemies) and a box of bullets (holding 50 bullets). A maximum of 250 bullets can be carried at once (500 with the ammo satchel).

The first time this weapon can be obtained for free is in the Prison. It can be purchased earlier in the game from Irale for 250 coins.

The assault rifle has two pickup sprites. They differ only in appearance - one is lying on the ground and the other one is standing vertically.

In early versions of the game, including the demo version, the weapon was called the "Pulse Rifle" (this name still appears in the help screen in the full version) and had a slightly different sprite with what appeared to be a circular stock surrounding the trigger.

Appearance statistics
In the IWAD the lying assault rifle is first encountered on these maps per skill level:

The standing assault rifle is first encountered on these maps:

The IWAD contains the following numbers of lying assault rifles per skill level:

It contains the following numbers of standing assault rifles: