Is there any reason to use rifles as a true kin tinker

[Sal]

I know about giant hands, but every mid to high tier rifle has a pistol equivalent with the same pen and 1 less average damage, which is just worse than getting 25% fire rate off of finger flexors. And the pistols skill tree also seems a lot better than the rifles one.

[Sal]

I could see an argument for using heavy weapons instead in the late game, although trying to power more than one phase cannon sounds painful. but those don't benefit from the rifle skills anyways, which puts late game rifles in a weird spot

[Icedfate]

pistols seem to have lower accuracy than rifles. the best rifles have "very high", while the best pistols have "high", which probably won't matter with 40+ agility, but in the mid 26+30 range, i still notice the difference.
also, akimbo has the risk of friendly fire, aggroing someone you don't want to, because it always fires both shots and if the first shot kills your target, the other shot just hits whatever was behind it.

[Sal]

I mean, I'm probably always using akimbo, its just whether I'm using it with rifles or pistols. The accuracy thing is a real consideration, although I'm probably not going to be sniping things across the map without clairvoyance.

[Sal]

having inaccuracy 2 vs inaccuracy 4 with an eigenrifle vs eigenpistol is the sort of thing where its hard to tell how much it matters without a lot of experience.

[anaris]

iirc they also have different optimal ranges - ie, you not only have higher inaccuracy on a pistol, but it becomes a factor at shorter ranges

[anaris]

the rifle skill tree is actually pretty scary when you have Ultra Fire. Pistols is much better if you're only dipping, though

[Sal]

idk, the only rifle skills that seem useful are suppressive/flattening. you should be able to get enough accuracy with arm stabilizers to not need sure fire, and shooting twice seems stronger than spending a turn to prep wounding fire, but maybe I'm undervaluing it.

[anaris]

Originally posted by Sal:

idk, the only rifle skills that seem useful are suppressive/flattening. you should be able to get enough accuracy with arm stabilizers to not need sure fire, and shooting twice seems stronger than spending a turn to prep wounding fire, but maybe I'm undervaluing it.

you don't usually "take a turn to prep" per se - you draw a bead and fire a couple times, then season with appropriate skills. Sure Fire is for early game and shooting across maps.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

pistols seem to have lower accuracy than rifles. the best rifles have "very high", while the best pistols have "high", which probably won't matter with 40+ agility, but in the mid 26+30 range, i still notice the difference.

It always matters no matter how high your agility is, since those are 0 different factors for the accuracy. You can not even out a low accuracy on a gun with high accuracy from your agility, you can only reach 0 added variance from your agility and are then left with the guns sole accuracy.

For DPS pistols are far superiors, since the skills in the tree (especially towards the end if you go full into them) give you a lot more attack speed/less attack energy cost even without considering the flexors, while all the rifle skills need you to sacrifice one turn to then use them any single time you do, since the mark gets consumed.

As you noted the perfect accuracy shot is not very useful once you got enough bonus (though you need a lot to reach perfect accuracy), but can still be nice at the start if you got a sniper rifle (and not that much with any before tier 4). Suppressive fire is definitely pretty powerful, since it has no cooldown, but wounding fire can also give you a lot of blood/oil. Ranged crits do not spill blood from enemy like melee crits do, so it can be a bit more of a chore to fill up your blood cells or items that need oil to work.

The biggest part for rilfes is really the accuracy and the utility from the skills, but not their damage. Rifles for ranged seem similar to what long blades are for melee: cool effects, but don't have as much damage per turn as basically any alternative (except CVK special cases) OR a good side arm for someone who does not focus on that type of combat. That said: they do enough damage. You don't really run much into DPS races unless you are swarmed and for those cases you can use freeze grenades, teleport etc..

Despite the utility skills from rifles, they are more cool special/utility guns on pistols than on rifles. Rifles basically have 2 later on and pistols 6+.

My hope is that they make the gun&rifle tree better scaling later on and more in line with the melee weapon skills: only uses one weapon for the attack. It is pretty weird that you can use "aimed shots" with multiple rifles at the same time and especially if you are using multiple guns, you usually do so for the bullet spam (which is what the pistol set is for (also carbine)).

Originally posted by anaris:

iirc they also have different optimal ranges - ie, you not only have higher inaccuracy on a pistol, but it becomes a factor at shorter ranges

The 2 accuracy values (weapon + from agility mod) are solely used for a calculation of the angle the shot leaves the gun. If you e.g. shoot on range 3, 10° will sill have the projectiles on the tile you aimed for, but the further it goes the more tile distance on the side it will get from the aimed middle. There is a mechanic for melee range problems with more than 1 enemy around you, but pistols don't have any bonus there. Spray-fire ignores that case and is available on shotguns (which are rifles).

[Sal]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, not everything needs to be good as a comital all in strategy. Still, it looks like there used to be a few more endgame guns that were unique to rifles, but they were all given a pistol equivalent or moved to heavy weapons. It would be cool if there were a few more unique end game rifles, maybe a laser shotgun or something.

[Icedfate]

since OP is playing a "truekin tinker", worth noting that tinkers can deploy turrets with the proper skill. I assume rifle turrets are stronger than pistol turrets, but i don't use turrets or mines. if i could "dismantle" my turrets afterwards to redeploy them somewhere else, i might have considered that playstyle (maybe i can? haven't tried it)

[2olluxander]

If you want to retrieve your ranged weapons from turrets you deploy, invest in the Long Blade skill tree for Dueling Stance and Swipe. It's clunky, but you can disarm your own turrets when you're done using them.

[Radical Rat]

There is also some turret mod adding bit of mobility, but i'm not sure if it still works after release

[Radical Rat]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283246096

[Radical Rat]

Originally posted by 2olluxander:

If you want to retrieve your ranged weapons from turrets you deploy, invest in the Long Blade skill tree for Dueling Stance and Swipe. It's clunky, but you can disarm your own turrets when you're done using them.

Another way just with Bow n Rifle skill is with Stasis Projector implant - deploy stasis field around it then use Flattening fire to dissarm it