I consider cattle prods & stun batons to be an utter underdog, for their crappy DPS.
Im worried about the portion of the damage which turns out to be lethal with handles. The prod/baton doesnt do lethal at all afaik.
How many brainers are you trying to support? Those suckers are expensive 
personally I fill up my entire quota as fast as I can
minimum 10, if not 15
I usually have them researching 3-4 different things.
Rifle ammo is around 4x times that for average 1.8 the time
Shotguns are
obscenely accurate, and the Military Shotgun AP ammo does like 50 damage or something. You would think they had a scope, reflex sight, and laser dot on them for the accuracy they've got. And you can buy the ammunition, and its available rather early on, and the ammo may even pile up from missions.
Rifles are a trap, the only use for them is auto fire at point blank range. And a Clockwork Gun is better for that (muh 40 damage). Scoped Hunting Rifle is the only exception ive seen for ranging.
My last experience with them was that they were too accurate, yes.
The arcing behavior along with obstructions really balances these weapons out. If anything the damage is rather steep for a bow (my suggestion is settling it at around 30, altering the damage bonus so that the ladies' veteran stats comes out to around that much, this being for the most destructive bows).
The use for a bow id say is a Throwing enhancer like how the various melee weapons are unarmed enhancers, so you can capitalize use of throwing skill for more than explosive stuff. It balances against firearms because bows and arrows should be dirt cheap.
Currently the combat bow and longbow are unnecessary, expensive, and even though its a game balance issue they have different ammo than the Hunting Bow -
which strangely has much less capacity. Most of the damage for the bow is in the damage bonus and its better to have 16 shots per quiver, plus you use ammo you're getting in the maps and can buy so you dont need to make it.
Hunting Bow you can just bring 1 quiver pretty much and itll work, no need for bringing more ammo. Its pretty dang effective, and something just seems odd about trying to shoot somebody in plasteel armor with arrows.
DPS doesnt mean
anything in tactical when you can shoot somebody Twice and walk off and let him bleed to death. Or since you know where they are, have someone else come out of nowhere and "handle" them because they're probably about to drop anyway.
All that matters in this game is how much damage you can do with one shot, because thats what will blow through armor, after that somebody can be left to bleed out. If they're really dangerous or they might kill civilians blowing them up is always an option, thats why you bring fancy weapons.
