Pistols vs smg's?

[FreezeLogic]

I put most of my points into SMG's but I can't help but feel they're underpowered. I use the HK SMG (the best smg available) and I also bought a ruger thunderbolt. Despite my extremely low skill in pistols compared to my SMG's skill it still seems like the pistol is pumping out more damage. Am I using SMG's wrong or do they just suck?

[shedim.kabal]

They pretty much suck. Flush target is nice and I like them on drones but damage and range are just not great compared to rifles and pistols, and the kneecap on shotguns is usually better than flush as well.

[St0rmFury]

SMGs use bullets like crazy. I'd pick pistols over them anytime because of the free reload and overall versatility.

[Zadok]

There's a 3-shot-burst SMG in the bonus campaign which sounds pretty good. Apart from that they are more of a utility weapon (flush). At least they don't require a high SMG skill - SMG 5 unlocks all special attacks.

Pistols on the other hand start relatively weak and ramp up until Pistols 9. Therefor it is very expensive to develop them properly. On low skill levels I find them underwhelming, although even low skill levels are popular as a side arm for a mage or rigger (due to the free reloads @Pistols 4). Pistols 7 already offers a pretty good crit chance and a bunch of multishot attacks. With that they are rather good, especially if you bring multiple pistols (each of which can use the specials on a seperate cooldown). As a bonus SR: HK offers skillwires to save some karma when aiming for high skill levels - chrome replaces karma.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

SMGs are something of a 'low bar to entry, low reward' type weapon class in these games. You get the skills & damage with a pretty small investment of XP, and then that's pretty much it aside from some crit rate. Very 'spray & pray,' if you will.

Pistols are the opposite, like Zadok mentioned above. High bar to mastery, but high rewards. If you pour enough XP into them, you'll be making skill-shots near every round for some really nasty crit damage.

Combat-rifles is probably the best all-round weapon class with some great damage, range & ammo for their investment, if expensive in nu-yen instead. Have to admit I find them a bit boring, though, since you'll be using that same bog-standard attack from hour 1 to 25, and I find that gets old.

[sn0wball]

I find it a weakness in camapign design, that there is no incentive to use smaller weapons. In the P&P RPG, runners would of course carry pistols either as discreet weapons or as secondary weapons. They should have integrated a hide and a legality score.

[Zadok]

Originally posted by sn0wball:

I find it a weakness in camapign design, that there is no incentive to use smaller weapons. In the P&P RPG, runners would of course carry pistols either as discreet weapons or as secondary weapons. They should have integrated a hide and a legality score.

That's not a "weakness": It would be very different and could be a strength to have such mechanics. Could also be worse, because you mess with the fighting mechanics and its balance for roleplay: That can go horribly wrong fairly easily.
It's not PnP and it does not help to pretend it's the same.