For manufacture, every item that requires a facility has that noted down in the description. As for researches, there are a grant total of 2 which require facilities (the two final 'educational' researches); facilities in question have that in their descriptions.
That's fine, I am not worried about manufacture. It's good to know about the research! I can stop being paranoid.
Might be a good idea, but I didn't want to make these weapons so heavy that only an expert gal in Loader Suit would be able to use them. There's 30 points of capacity in difference between Hover and Loader, but a starting gal has, say, 30 strength, while the maximum is 80, thus making 50 difference. Maybe I'll up the weight of these weapons by say, 15 or so, while buffing Power Armor to +35 cap, and the Loader to +60? And indeed, the firing cost can be dropped a bit (although the Vulcan is probably the least useful of the 3 dedicated weapons - I don't think Tornado needs any buffs).
Actually, I realized last night that I was sort of misusing the loader suit, since that was my first playtest of the vulcan. It takes a fair bit less time to fire than a HMG already and my loader gal was a lot more useful, sort of keeping up with the main advance. The only issue is that my hover gal also upgraded her HMG to a vulcan, and she can move more, plus has the benefit of being able to shoot over the head of the frontline, instead of having to try to keep up with it, but she's also more able to keep up since she has more TUs. (I very much enjoyed using the vulcan to shred everything in front of the gals
I think that weapon is awesome!)
I guess it depends on what you want with the loader. Either it is dedicated to carrying one very heavy gun and then it'd need a buff (or more restriction on carrying the very heavy guns in other armors), or its advantage is being able to carry two very heavy guns while a hover gal can only carry one.
I use a "Space marines" training regime for the gals (dedicated training squad to take on easy shipping like smalls with ballistic weapons, then they are first integrated in the "real team" as sniper rifle gals since that helps them hit, which in turn trains accuracy and strength further, and then they move on to heavy weapons and/or closer to the frontline). This means my heavies are capped in strength already. My heavies and sniper have a very low injury rate (except when something spots them exiting the top hatch on T1..) so they are really good after a year of machine gunning (multiple hits per kill) or sniping (multiple gals hit once on a target to eventually bring it down).
The hover gal has a HMG and a Mortar, and up until last mission, my loader gal was HMG + Rocket Launcher. That was a bad setup for the loader since those weapons are too slow to fire. Now the Hover is upgraded to a vulcan + mortar, Loader is vulcan + rocket, and at least she can move a little and fire. So the loader got a bit better (and I am guessing I will replace the rocket with the rocket-mortar, whereas that'll be too heavy for the hover gal). But it remains to be seen if that's enough of an edge for the loader. (there's a bit of increased armor, but being able to fly and shoot over other gals means that you can stay back more in hover and get better fields of fire, so that's generally better. Won't work in base assaults, obviously.. I haven't done one of those yet. Need better mid-range guns).
Personally, I would make it so a loaded vulcan is 75-80 weight (a small change, I guess, from the 68 it is now). That means your strongest gal can lift it, if she's not wearing/carrying anything. This is probably best done by upping the weight of the gun itself (since that helps with carrying extra ammo). With +15 carrying cap on Hover, you get to carry a few extra things, IF you are super strong (70+), or you just benefit from the added mobility. With that, I'd reduce the TU cost from 70% to.. 60%? It's not that much, but it will help the loader take the few extra steps. The tradeoff for Hover then becomes "mobile vulcan + not much" or "less mobile HMG + more stuff". The HMG is also very slow to fire..
I think explosive weapons might need a weight boost too (Currently: RPG: 8+6; Rocket Launcher: 10+8; Mortar: 12+6; Maybe up to RPG: 12+6; RL: 18+6; Mortar: 20-24+6) which would make them less easy to carry as a secondary weapon, especially the mortar which to me should be a big clunky thing.
Or maybe I just failed at developing advanced (heavy) weapons, and I am not seeing the benefits of the Loader because I am still using "early" weapons with 80 Str gals after a year of play...
