depending of your sistem of assault.
i use the shotguns with alloy ammo. i never assault in open. i try ever hidde my troops. and i prefer close combat(discover,move,shoot,hide), now i discover gauss weapons 5 months later. i know but shock a engeneer has been hard in this party for me XD
miniguns are perfect if you use a defensive base, similar to the hmg and lmg, when you have a soldier ready for use you have more advanced weapons to assault.
incendary........ light in nights only
and the fusion i dont have experience
and the general tactic, explosions explosion and more explosions XD..... when no have missiles shotguns XD
Like I said, different playstyles
And I'll concede the shotguns to some degree, truth is I've used them for some base defences in the past.
However, I don't like CQB. Reaction fire can be a pain in the posterior and the RNG is a vengeful god. So I roll in with a HWP in a scouting role, drop some smoke and try to shoot the aliens from beyond their visibility range.My preferred CQB weapons are high explosive, LMG and multilauncher. So I don't have much use for SMGs or shotguns. But I'm *happy* that they're there, they do add more options and require no research of their own (unless you do want to use them).
But miniguns? Too heavy to give to regular troops, too low power to give to those few soldiers who can use heavy weapons because I need those to carry more hard-hitting weapons like rocket launchers, multilaunchers, sniper rifles etc. Much better to defend my bases with proximity grenades, high explosives, HWPs and whatever my regular weapons are at the moment.
Incendiary? Flares are light, require few TUs, last the whole fight unless blown up and all soldiers can use both flares and damage-dealing weapons. Giving a soldier incendiary weapon means he's basically only useful for illuminating the battlefield and in some terrains he's unable to do that on most of said battlefield because most incendiary weapons are direct-fire. So I remain unconvinced.
And I do agree about the explosives. In fact I'm still thinking about modding in a light mortar, something like L9A1. But I'll take grenades, high explosives, rockets, proximity grenades and grenade launchers too
