Weapon upgrade option

[SageGamer]

upgrades on weapons being checks and the upgrades being items

[evilwb]

This may make it in someday but there are some challenges. Decoupling weapon XP from the current weapon will be difficult. This is important because different evolutions of the same weapon are treated like completely different weapons in the game code and have different XP tracking as a result. For example, If you have XP on the Lancer and get given the Heavy Lancer, you will no longer be able to get XP for the Lancer but for the Heavy Lancer instead.

[LockKal]

Decoupling weapon XP from the current weapon will be difficult. This is important because different evolutions of the same weapon are treated like completely different weapons in the game code and have different XP tracking as a result.

My thoughts on this go straight to "Is decoupling XP from weapons necessary?", but that depends on several factors lining up:

1. If you got a full XP gauge and got an upgrade check (so not getting the upgrade but another item entirely), would the weapon remain the same, but with the full XP gauge? Does it matter whether or not the weapon still gains XP or not, since the upgrades are treated as different weapons, and as such, you would need to find the upgrade to then use it to gain XP for the upgraded weapon? Does it try upgrading each time you get XP when maxed, or does it only check once? Or does the weapon think it shouldn't be there anymore since it is being replaced by another item (normally the upgrade)?
   Ideally, I would think if it remains with a full XP gauge and doesn't throw errors from not having upgraded, that would be the first requirement. XP doesn't need to carry over.

2. Is it possible to withhold upgrades until the weapon would have evolved naturally? This would be important to ensure that you could get the check for maxing the XP gauge for the weapon before upgrading. Alternatively, does getting the weapon upgrade elsewhere then give you both checks instead (if you hadn't managed to upgrade it before acquiring the pickup)?
   Either of these, or some other solution, would be necessary to not lock you out of getting items.

3. Would conditional functionality when having weapon upgrades extensions enabled/disabled be necessary? If disabled, do the expensive mega upgrades from NG+ enter the vendor when you evolve the weapon to the heavy variant (or in the case of the Gadgetron weapons, when their base forms are acquired)?

4. Like wrench upgrades, is it possible to make the weapon upgrades as progressive pickups? To make it function with point (2.), does it instead give the ability to level up the gun by one stage, instead of actually releasing the item?

I thought I would mention this approach, but whether or not it would be more challenging than finding the solution to decoupling XP I can't say, though I would think even if you decoupled XP, are there even enough checks in the pool to add all of the upgrades (since you wouldn't have the check on upgrade, unless I'm thinking about this wrong). There would be 52(?) upgrade checks, excluding the initial weapons that are purchasable in the first playthough, not considering NG+ purchasables.