For the nano-intensive classes, pistols are one of the few weapons with a reasonable ip cost. And listening to the community, FC has responded by adding a new decent gun -- the original electronicum.
However, as it stands, pistol remains a horrid choice for these classes:
The reason is simple, pistol implants in the bright and faded in the right hand and eye, respectively.
The same place that MC and TS implant.
The shining implants in right wrist, which is almost as bad, since it conflicts with ranged init.
The worst case has to be Engie. Even post 14.4, Engies have the best pistol buff in the game, Extreme prejudice. However, at best, Engies can only implant pistol in shining, since they HAVE to implant MC/TS fully.
Now since the bot is currently next to useless in team missions, some engies have abandoned MC/TS, but assuming some fix to pathing, this cannot ultimately be a correct choice, or a good position to put them in. NTs are not much better off, esp. at the early to mid lvls.
The result -- you either sacrifice 105 AMS, or pick up a different weapon.
As far as I can tell, the reasoning behind the pistol implant locations is flavor -- wrist, hand, eye. But barring a sick sense of humor, this cannot be the intended consequence...
I think that the implant locations are overall quite well designed, and force some interesting choices.
Pistol, however, needs to be relocated....
) or just poor planing.