My last experience with them was that they were too accurate, yes. Being able to hit far away isn't so bad. You can still feel the effect of them being balanced for when there was a hitting bug, and gals had low throwing acc because you wanted to nerf grenades.
Now that it's not the case, even if the weapons have been nerfed a bit, most thrown stuff is still pretty easy to get 80+% to hit with, compared to many rifles having just 90-100% accuracy on aimed shots, which gives you 60-70% to hit on a 70 firing acc gal. They also have more shots/turn and the damage is can quickly be better than with starting guns. Doing shots * chance to hit * damage applied, bows are way better. For example:
Combat Bow: 120% of throwing, aimRange 21, dropoff 4, 30 TUs, damage 10 + 40% Throwing + 10% Strength
Rifle: 100% of Firing, 60% TUs, damage 30
Take a 60 accuracy, 60 TUs, 40 STR gal:
Combat bow: 72% to hit (60% at 24 tiles distance), 2 shots/turn, 28 damage -> 40 damage/turn expected up to 21 tiles away.
Rifle: 60% to hit, 1 shot/turn, 30 damage -> 18 damage/turn expected
You actually need to go out to 31 tiles away, where bow accuracy drops to 32%, to get the same 18 damage/turn expected (32% * 2 * 28 = 18). With the increased visibility, that's possible, but it's not often necessary and often the rifle won't have a clear line of sight past 30 tiles either. If you are 31 tiles away, you can actually use 28 TUs with the bow gal to walk 7 tiles closer instead and get back to 60% accuracy. Then you essentially get the same outcome as a rifle (60% * 1 * 28), except that next turn you're close enough to fire twice at the same 60% accuracy, or move in to the preferred range of 21 and then fire once with the better accuracy.
So for the cost of 2 damage, you fire twice as much, which means twice as much throwing XP opportunity so you'll improve faster, and more dependable results. You also have better hit chance up to 23 tiles away which is still a decently safe distance given that you have arcing shots so you can fire while the enemy rarely can fire back and terrain doesn't matter as much unless it's indoors or a forest.
And then it keeps getting more advantageous for the bowgal as she improves her throwing accuracy (again, 2x faster than the firing one), since not only will she increase her close range advantage, she'll also extend the range to which she beats the rifle gal and she'll soon beat the damage too. I'd have to double check, but I think the outfits that boost throwing are also easier to come by and more numerous than those that boost firing, and they will boost bow damage on top of accuracy compared to rifles.
Since bows keep improving with the gal, it keeps getting harder and harder to find rifles that can compete. Maybe a battle rifle with PS ammo would be better than a bow for the 60/60/40 gal I used here. However, by the time you have that rifle, the gal won't be 60/60/40 anymore, she'll likely have good enough stats that the battle rifle doesn't measure up either, etc. Using stamina has decreased the ability to spam arrows, but with 2 shots per turn, instead of having two rifle gals you can afford to go down to 1 bow gal + 1 grog gal. Except the grog gal can probably help more than 1 bow gal per turn and you get 2-3 bows to 1 grog, where you get 4-6 shots out of 3-4 gals, which still beats the 3-4 shots out of 3-4 rifles.
Rifles do better indoors and in closer quarter with auto and snap shots and since they don't take stamina so you can run around more. But then melee/pistol/smg is better than rifles. So rifles rarely have a point until you get to sniper rifles (for gals that you stubbornly kept using guns with) or LC/HC/AC/HMGs.
