Assault weapons

[Saurissimo]

I've recently came to wonder about the purpose of these things. One would expect such heavy weapons to dish out some serious punishment, but in reality... Well, they seem to be pretty meh, clumsy and with low DPS compared to any other weapon.

I'd like to ask you lot, do you know what purpose do these guns serve?

[Saurissimo]

They are unexplainably worse at killing stuff than other weapons, though. Which implies some other redeeming quality. I cannot quite see any redeeming qualities in them, however. Hence my question. I am well aware stuff is balanced against one another, in theory, for the sake of fairness, but it is not the case when it comes to assault weapons. They seem plain and simply inferior.

[Jaq]

Pulsewaves are good against Borg and generally useful as an off-weapon for quick blasts.

Blast Assaults were a viable alternative to sniper rifles against Borg back in the old, old days when we only had basic weapons, but that was the only purpose I ever found for them. I had a theory that they might be a good option for Bridge Officers who seem to be limited in how frequently they're allowed to shoot anyway, but it wasn't making enough of a difference to offset the boffs' greater usefulness as storage space for all the unique weapons I didn't want to equip (but didn't want to sell).

I'm not sure if miniguns were ever good for anything. The Sonic ones were okay for proccing on Tholians back before CCA made farming Nukara a waste of time.

OTOH, has there ever been a single scenario in which a stun pistol was worth equipping? Yet they continue to stuff these into seemingly every lockbox as a personal weapon reward.

With new personal weapons coming out every few weeks, odds are all standard weapon types will become obselete eventually (if they haven't already). Just make the friggin' wizard staves obsolete too please. I hated how stupid they made the game look back when everybody was using them.

[Amekeru]

Assault guns are good for the whole crit build captains. Or at least that's how it feels. I know that when I was messing around with them, the assault cannons just hit harder-ish when they crit? I dunno. I normally don't use the giant guns because they don't fit with my style. I mostly stick with my Bajor rifle or Omega Carbine.

[Saurissimo]

Crit builds, you say... May as well toy with that. Big thanks to you all for input.