QUOTE (Smokeskin @ Apr 29 2010, 02:32 AM)

I never got this kind of thinking. Sure, if you're designing something for a military campaign, dropping pistols could work. But for mirror shades work, often you can't get away with lugging a machine pistol around. So you're going to go unarmed instead? Getting semi-auto pistols at 3 costs just 6 BP or 4 for 10 BP, that's a bargain, gives you a ton of options for concealed carry, legal carry (only limited fake ID backgrounds justify automatic licenses), and if you have to go somewhere unarmed and things turn south chances are the first gun you liberate will be a pistol.
But in mirror shades work it also becomes doubly important to avoid redundant skills so that you can actually perform well in things that don't involve just shooting people right in the face. So, yeah, there's drawbacks to only being familiar with a certain class of weaponry, but overall I find the drawbacks to be less severe than say, not knowing how to slice a basic maglock or how to shmooze a li'l with social skills. Having a couple of firearm skills isn't bad, per se, but the opportunity cost leads me to consider it a luxury at best. It's the sort of thing that back in the day I may have had a SkillSoft for, but that'd be as far as I went.