Talk:Rifle vs Pistol

Okay, so the elephant in the room with this and all the starting weapon comparisons is that inside 2 weeks they become moot because of Laser Pistols. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Now, that aside:

- Snap fire is not better than Auto fire on the Rifle. The claim that it is is strictly based on assumption of exactly 100% TU on only Snap shots vs. exactly 100% TU on only Auto bursts (the actual optimum is 2 Auto bursts + 1 Snap shot, which is more powerful than 4 Snap shots despite taking less TU).

- When you're using that proper firepower number for the Rifle, the Pistol does not exceed the Rifle's firepower against any enemies except Sectoids. (Essentially, the Pistol gets 3 hits per turn per 100 Firing Accuracy; the Rifle gets 2.7, and 3*26 < 2.7*30. Sectoids are the exception because the Rifle's more likely to overkill and thus waste DPS.)

- Sectoid Leaders are not better-armoured than any other Sectoids, nor do they have more health.

- The Rifle's clip doesn't last much longer than the Pistol's unless you're conserving ammo (i.e. forgoing the use of the otherwise-most-effective Auto mode). 7 shots per turn means the clip runs out in 3 turns of continuous fire, the same as the Pistol (though it gets most of its shots off on that third turn, while the Pistol doesn't). Practically, I find you'll typically not need to reload with either in the situations where you'll usually be using them (Small UFOs; by the time any larger UFOs appear - the end of January, with two Terror ships - the aforementioned elephant in the room will have stepped on this analysis), even on Superhuman and without any eye to ammo conservation; one reload for each in case of emergency is my usual, but it's not strictly necessary.

I'd have done a rewrite already, but the Weapon Analysis pages are a tad more personalised than your average article so I'm declaring my intent first. Any objections to a rewrite fixing all of these? Magic9mushroom (talk) 04:22, 20 May 2015 (EDT)