Currently pistols are outclassed by rifles in every way, but I think they could be made more useful if the pistol would not slow down the player when they're shooting.

Other than that, I love this mod. Its excellent and doesn't obsolete vanilla weapons, because the vanilla assault rifle can be used safely within a base.

Thanks for the feedback. I am currently working on 1.2 and am going to completely overhaul the entire mod. I plan (but by no means garuntee) to add over 42 weapons and corresponding ammo types, as well as an improved health system with healing items among other things. One of my key goals when creating this new version is to have every weapon stay relevant, even in the late game. As you pointed out, having high mobility with pistols is the exact way I plan to keep them viable, even when heavier weapons will be available. I have no current ETA on this version, but I am making some significant progress so rest assured that the balance of the mod will be better in future versions.

Sweet, I'm excited to hear that!

42 weapons sounds a lot, since I usually rely on 2 weapons at any given time, but if they're all about variety like the arsenal from the UT2004 mod Ballistic Weapons, then I'm down to mix it up and try different sets of weapons for multiple playthroughs.

To make personal combat more fun, I'd suggest these extras:
-Make spitter projectiles non-homing
-Add sprinting (hold down a button to run faster, disable item use)
-Add dodging/dodge dashing (double tap a direction to dodge or press button+direction to dodge)
-Add temporary slomo on low health

I just finished a second playthrough with this mod installed and I charged on foot, backed up with squads of robots from the Robot Army, as we fought together to bring down massive biter bases, with me leading the charge using the military tier (3) FirearmsPlus weapons.

That experience was one of the coolest gaming experiences I've had in a long time. Thank you for being a part of that.

Don't worry, the weapons won't be boring. I've divided them into categories such as pistols, SMGs ARs Snipers, Shotguns LMGs and Exotics (such as rocket launcher, crossbow, etc.) Ammo can be smelted down and turned into other ammo so theres less dumping stuff in chests and shooting them. I've also kind of implemented reloading, but its badly bugged right now and it will take some work to fix. Overall, very early but I already have over 20 weapons in various stages of implementation.

As for sprinting and dodging, I have not much experience when it comes to that side of factorio's codebase, adding new animations is ridiculously hard (for me, im no expert). Maybe i implement it in a later version but for now im just working towards my goals.

Hmm, categories kinda does sound boring to me, since it sounds like a number of the same weapons with a few minor alterations, rather than each gun being a unique experience that makes sense to use against an infinite horde of bugs that charge at me relentlessly.

The crossbow in particular seems like a bad idea to deal with the type of threat biters pose and how combat goes against them. It would seems like the LMG would be the best tool for regular attack, while rocketlauncher or sniper for specialized high-damage or AoE shots as a secondary attack. Having SMGs and ARs alongside the LMG would seem like just variations on the same thing, though less impressive in regards to firepower.

Not sure why you'd want to implement a reloading system, given the vanilla game's combat against infinite waves of biters probably prompted the simplification of combat to be the "hold spacebar to fight back" thing (along with the basic cooldown) in the first place.

About the sprinting and dodging, I hear that these are not a priority, thought I would like to highlight that there are cheaper ways to add these features that don't require changes to animation or any new graphics.

Sprinting might be simply achieved by giving a temporary exoskeleton speed boost bonus, without ever touching the graphics.

Likewise, dodging would simply forcibly push the location of the player avatar without any changes to animation, even without needing to consider the rotation of the player.

If anything, simply displaying I tiny symbol icon (a green upward arrow graphic) next to the player character while the sprinting or dodging is on would be enough information to me as the player to be well happy with it.

In my experience, I always preferred more variety over less, and I intend to give each weapon its own bonus, e.g. fast reload, fast fire-rate compared to other weapons, longer range, higher DPS the list goes on. I forgot to mention the crossbow will have the choice of armour piercing bolts for the large / behemoths, and high-yield explosive bolts for the masses. An effective weapon in most cases. As for dodging, I don't have any plans to include it, at least for the initial release of 1.2. LMGs will be truly different to other weapons, as the large ammo capacity per magazine means less reloading and more shooting. I have balanced them so that they slow the player down by about 75 - 90% but they put out devastating firepower, so you will be able to hold your ground against all but the largest bases.

I have created an option to turn off reloading if you don't like it, but I would consider it one of the key balancing points for the weapons, so don't expect perfect balance with it turned off.