Boring but Practical/Video Games/Simulation Game


 * In the X-Wing combat sim games, the starfighter of choice on The Alliance side is... the X-wing. Durable, well-armed, nimble, and fast, it's an excellent multirole craft, more dangerous all around than the more heavily-armed B-wing, the faster A-wing, or the tougher Y-wing. This holds true in Rogue Leader as well; it's the ship of choice for getting gold medals.
 * The X-wing and Y-wing can be seen as interchangable versions of this trope. The Y-wing has the less impressive design, is slower, harder to control and only has 2 torpedos more than than the big all-round X-wing. It's often mentioned as being a deathtrap when having to take on enemy fighters. While it never got the iconic status of the X-wing it's a respected machine among gamers. If you get the hang on it and know how to use it you can even take out TIE Avengers with it.
 * In TIE Fighter, the Imperial solution to Zaarin's faction getting their hands on the TIE Defender is to make the Missile Gunboat, whose secret special power is ... loads and loads of missiles.
 * SimCity 4 has several power plants to choose from including nuclear and fusion power which have extra requirements to unlock. The most cost effective power plant by far, however, is coal, which is available from the start. It is true that the advanced ones produce no pollution, but the effects of coal pollution are tolerable if well-placed in the city limits and will save a lot of money.
 * One problem with coal when building a gigantic (as in whole-region), dense metropolis: space. Not wishing to have an entire small-tile city devoted chiefly to coal power plants for its power-guzzling metropolis neighbors, I once elected to run the whole town (i.e. one large-tile district of the megalopolis, pop. ~2.1 million) on a few nuclear plants in the far corner of the main city. It worked (and got a good chunk of extra Industrial zone—from where I had put the old coal plants back when the town was much smaller) as a bonus. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is just silly.
 * Also, transportation options play along this as well. Although many argue that rail takes up real estate on the surface and requires well placed stations as opposed to subways (which in 4/Deluxe, are the Game Breaker), however, they're cheaper, very efficient at passenger travel, and ideal for industries as usage for freight travel, since trains don't often have to put up with as much traffic as freight trucks, plus, they do not contribute to pollution.
 * Also, roads and avenues as opposed to highways. Indeed, highways can handle more traffic volume and have higher speed, but, they're enormous and difficult to make maneuver around obstacles (say a building or ocean), however, avenues, being a bit smaller and more maneuverable (can be built in 90 degree corners), and roads being declared "standard" amongst dense zones for movement, allow for a better flow of transportation. Likewise, either early in the game or for smaller cities and suburbs, streets actually prove to be ideal for lighter zones. The game even points this out to you quite often with having "not enough streets".
 * And you can combine both the advantages of avenues and roads (in the expansion) by building the roads one-way...which is incidentally what most major real-life cities do anyway.
 * Most Ace Combat games give you special weapons that range from bombs of varying sizes to long-range air-to-air missiles to Frickin' Laser Beams, but 90+ % of your kills will come from standard missiles and maybe guns. This is mostly because you get 50-80 regular missiles and (nearly) unlimited bullets and usually less than 20 shots of special weapons.
 * Warship Gunner 2 gives the player access to Wave Motion Guns, Macross Missile Massacres, Frickin' Laser Beams (with Beam Spam option), and UFOs, but standard big guns are still the go-to weapon because of their combination of power, range, rate of fire, magazine size, and the ability to fire in almost any direction.
 * In the SNES game Captain Tsubasa 5, there are all sorts of incredible "shoot at the goal" moves, like Tiger Shot, Drive Shot, Flame Shot, etc etc. The most effective way to score? The special pass moves. The "shoot" specials automatically give the goalee a chance to save the ball, whereas the "pass" specials will go to cutscene for a second, then the ball will more or less teleport to the destination you set. If this destination is the extreme left or right of the goal, the poor goalkeeper will basically have no chance to react as the ball bounces off the ground and rolls into the goal. This is in fact a Game Breaker and unsatisfying to boot.
 * Buster force from Alien Soldier. It doesn't have the insane power capabilities or flame force or lancer force, and lacks any special attributes. However, it's perhaps the most useful gun in many situations; it uses low energy, has fairly decent power, and a good firing rate.