Strategy:Rapid-fire Types

General

Rapid-fire weapons deal the most 1v1 damage of any weapon type (even more than the BFG) and require the least-frequent reloading. If the enemies are coming at you one-by-one, rapid-fire weapons will leave them motionless on the ground before they can react.

The two main weapons in this group are the chaingun and plasma rifle. The chaingun is generally worse than shotguns unless your character has got traits that boost rapid-fire damage/accuracy, but the plasma rifle is rather handy on any character.

While chainguns deal bullet damage, a damage type that's rather average (but is heavily resisted by skeletal enemies - lost souls and revenants), plasma rifles deal plasma damage which is basically the best damage type you could ever ask for - it halves enemy armour before dealing damage and nothing really resists it. This, combined with the massive damage per second that a plasma rifle does, makes it an excellent weapon both for rapid-fire specialists and most characters in general.

All rapid-fire weapons can chainfire. By pressing the alternate fire key (default: shift+F) you can commit yourself to a chainfire sequence of actions. The first chainfiring action will shoot less bullets than normal, the second will shoot the regular amount of bullets, then the third (and all subsequent shots) will fire more than usual. If you think an enemy or group will take 4 or more firing actions to defeat, chainfiring will get more bullets in to them in less time.

You can cancel chainfiring at any time by pressing escape (or it will cancel automatically if all visible enemies die), meaning that you can purposefully do only one chainfire action to fire less ammo. This can be save ammo if you're only shooting at an enemy with very low HP.

Rapid-fire-based characters

Rapid-fire weapons are generally very inaccurate, and don't have an easy way to get around it like rocket launchers do. Generally if you want to use rapid-fire weapons (especially the chaingun in the early-mid game) you need to take points in either Son of a Bitch or Eagle Eye. SoB affects all of the shots you fire in a given turn, so a chaingun (which fires 4 shots while regularly firing or a max of 6 while chainfiring) will get much more benefit than a weapon that only fires one shot per turn. Eagle Eye will also increase your damage just by making you miss less often.

Rapid-fire weapons generally use more ammo than other weapons - especially if you can't get eagle eye for some reason. Agility mods on your weapons will help in this case, but you should still bring around a large amount of ammo unless you're going for Ammochain.

Rapid-fire Marine - Ammochain

Ammochain reduces all firing actions from using N ammo (where N is the amount of shots you fire) to using only 1, no matter what. This means that you need to bring around much less ammo than normal and also that you'll never have to reload halfway through a fight ever again.

Because it blocks Eagle Eye, this master trait means that you'll definitely want to put one or more agility mods on your weapons.

Rapid-fire Scout - Cateye

Cateye's effects aren't quite as powerful as ammochain, but it requires fewer traits and blocks only traits that you probably weren't going to get anyway - so it gives you more flexibility in your trait choices. In particular, this trait does not block eagle eye, and if you want to shoot a plasma rifle at extremely far targets then you're going to need some points in it.

Enemy vision range will be 2 shorter than yours, giving you two free shots as they try to get closer to you. Or you can be a little stealthy and walk away before they notice you, giving you time to prepare a little more if they're powerful and in a tricky spot.

Rapid-fire Technician - Entrenchment

Entrenchment also doesn't block Eagle Eye, which is nice. The two armor points you get from TaN 2 (and you'll probably be in red armor by this point, so that's an extra 4) combined with a 30% resistance to all damage while chainfiring gives you an extreme ability to sit there and take punishment, but you will still get overwhelmed by groups of enemies.

In particular, this trait reduces your reliance on corner-shooting but still requires you to try and fight one-on-one. You might be surprised at how little damage you take from arch-viles and revenants when sitting down and chainfiring them with red armor on, no need to hide behind a corner. Watch out for plasma damage, which is only resisted by blue armor (plus your master trait, of course) and halves your otherwise massive armor score.