Fire Modes
The best status effect is death. Same reason that the guidance “kill one target rather than injure three” exists. If I want to crowd control people I’ll throw a grenade.
AR/SMG Burst damage is inferior to single shot damage in most cases, with the minor exception of being accuracy capped anyway, in which two single headshots at +80% damage for similar cost would be more reliable. You can sort of make it work by using one of the burst capable weapons that can add an extra round to burst when modded. (FAL, AK74 etc) In that case you’ll still be better off just using a machinegun which will fire more bullets for less AP anyway.
The balance is weird.
Sniper rifles/LMGs are both in great shape – the combination of the two is pretty much all you need, and I think there is a reasonable argument for using an RPK74 as a better AR.
Pistols are decent within their range, the desert eagle in particular has very good damage for 4 AP.
SMGs and ARs both suffer from burst taking a lot of investment just to be okay, and their single target damage being a little low to begin with. (i.e. you can do a crit build to improve bursts, but you’ll still probably be better off with single shots)
Shotguns work but suffer as primary weapons because their range is so low and higher end armor cannot be penetrated even with good ammo. (bursting for 13 damage is not impressive)
Heavy weapons are in great shape mostly because they don’t suffer accuracy penalties the same way. Underslung grenade launchers on assault rifles are very good, probably the best explosive weapon in usability/cheap ammo to craft.
My personal solution has been to use the mod that reduces the damage penalty on burst only to 25%, but leaves the 50% penalty on full auto fire. I’ve found that this has helped greatly in making assault rifles and smgs feel consistent without getting out of hand.
Not always possible.
Sometimes my AP are not enough to eliminate all immediate threats. So I kill the dangerous ranged ones first, shoot the arms of the surviving dangerous ranged enemies (so their turn will not be so bad for me) and shoot the feet of the melee attacker (so they won’t reach my mercs and approach but not attack, cause they are out of AP).
Next turn I switch to shotgun, finish the melee enemies that are right in front of me, and focus the rest of the fire on the remaining ranged enemies.