...BO assault rifles are worse than the G11 due to being slower at firing.
IMO, the BO rifles, Smartrifle and G11 all have something to offer and none is strictly better than all others at all things:
- Smartrifle: Most lead downrange, best snap and aimed accuracy, TU and range (except aimed, where the BO Rifle is slightly better). Poorer armour penetration (90%).
- G11: Best auto-shot accuracy and range, three auto-shots per turn, middle-range armor penetration (85%). Damage is dependent on bravery and getting a soldier to have enough to compete with alloy ammo (180 bravery) can be hard. Poor aimed shot (so it's not really a rifle, more of a pseudo-machinegun), even if you might get to shoot twice per turn every once in a while.
- BO Rifle: Best aimed accuracy, best armor penetration (80%) for regular rounds (but not alloy ones, which are 85% for some reason).
- BO Assault Rifle: 4-shot autofire with the same 80% AP ammo. Two aimed shots per turn. Worse stats otherwise, though.
The Smartrifle is the best general-purpose rifle, the G11 is the best medium-range autorifle (assuming your soldier has enough bravery).
Pistols: Mk23 Socom due to being common enough and having enough punch against more armored enemies. BO pistol is better due to more ammo and slighly better snap , but they ain't much difference.
BO pistol has two other advantages: 1) it takes alloy rounds, so can get a mid-game damage upgrade (which is pretty big due to the game's armour penetration model), and 2) 4 extra tiles of aimed range, which is minor and mostly compensates for its lower aimed accuracy.
Shotguns: Black ops all the way, first the BO shotgun and then the CAWS.
No love for the Thrasher? That thing just
deletes lightly armoured targets.
SVD are much better than the auto sniper and really shine as reaction fire long range rifles, hiiting like a truck.
Being better might be true, hitting like a truck compared to the BO Auto-Sniper not quite, due to 1) alloy ammo and 2) much better armour penetration. Maybe it's irrelevant because you're not shooting armoured enemies much, but all the 'proper' sniper rifles have a better armour penetration coefficient than regular rifles. Which the SVD is for some reason, despite the 'S' in its name.
spypistol(worse imo than the snub revolver)
Spypistol's one party trick is being able to be taken to certain covert missions (industrial and skiing). Nailguns and crossbows are probably better, though.
...the machine guns (which IIRC the smart one isn't avatible early, so bad weapons overall).
Eh, I figure the plain BO LMG is about as much better as the real-world machineguns as the Smartgun is better than the BO LMG. If you compare the auto-shots for the G11 and the BO LMG, I think the BO LMG comes out on top, especially since you can trade shots for accuracy and vice versa.
So in summary I would say BO weapons complement, rather than replace standard weapons and really they ain't massively better with regular ammo compare to standard guns.
Really?
Pistols: Just minor improvements until alloy ammo and/or the smart versions, agreed.
SMGs: The BO SMG has a
massively more accurate and flexible autofire, especially due to its 3-round snap. The Macro SMG has beastly damage on top of being quite accurate. Whether an SMG is something you want to use, well, IDK... But if you do, a BO version is significantly better in the SMG role (the P90 is sorta edging into assault rifle territory).
Assault rifles: Except for the G11, the BO rifles are noticeably better than the competion. Especially the versions that give you two aimed shots per turn on top of autofire. If you don't need both aimed and auto shots, you don't need an assault rifle, period.
Shotguns: Some of the best offerings are BO.
Machine guns: Also considerably better than historical weapons. The Smartgun is the best kinetic machine gun until the more sci-fi weapons show up.
Sniper rifles: Ditto.
Rifles: Yeah, worse than the scaling regular rifles.
Miniguns: No real competition. The actual SMGs of the mod, and good for stripping armour.
Heavy weapons: The BO Assault Cannon is better than the Auto-Cannon at what it does.
I'd say that except for handguns and non-sniper rifles, the BO weapons are all at least a moderate upgrade. And all of them get a new lease of life with alloy ammo.