To echo Sever, is that sarcasm?

Assault rifles, round for round, are more powerful than pistols. Just because the caliber is bigger doesn't mean that the round is more powerful.

Pistol ammo is shorter, and thus contains less powder than rifle rounds. Even .223 (5.56mm) assault rifles have much more power than a 10mm pistol. Compound this with the shorter barrel (the longer the barrel, the longer the projectile is accelerated, and the faster the bullet is), and the pistol has much less muzzle energy than the rifle.

5.56mm rifle rounds

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ary-rounds.jpg

some popular pistol rounds
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...P_50AE_002.jpg
left to right, 9mm luger, 7.62mm tokarev, .357 sig, 10mm auto, .40 s&w, .45 gap, .50AE (desert eagle)

5.56 mm NATO, 10mm auto
(5.56 × 45 mm)
wt: 3.95–5.18 g, 10-13g
muzzle velocity: 772–930 m/s, 366-408m/s
muzzle energy: 1,700–1,830 J, 861-943 J

The 10mm auto, btw, is one of the most powerful handguns in existence, barring exotics like the .44magnum and .50AE. </font>[/QUOTE]I am not going to take sides on this argument, but I wanted to point out a difference between rifles and pistols that everyone has made the mistake of omitting.

One of the main features of rifles (small, fast bullets which travel through a body and do not mushroom out inside the body) is to "wound" the enemy--not necessarily kill him. By wounding the enemy, you not only take that person out of the fight, you also take out at least one other person who has to help/retrieve/whatever that person as well. The rifle is also very effective at killing enemies (especially at longer ranges), but then only one person is out of the fight, not two.

Pistols are meant to stop/kill enemies at close range. Unlike the rifle bullets, these larger bullets are meant to mushroom out inside a body and do as much damage as possible to make the person they hit die, or at least stop them in their tracks.

Does this answer the question about which of the two are more powerful? Not at all. Both are meant for two different situations and are more effective in those situations for different reasons.

Not all rifle rounds are equal.

There are many, many rifle rounds with expanding tips, mainly hunting ammo.

The type of "pointy" ammo people keep referring to here is so-called ball ammo - and pistol ammo comes in this flavour as well. Other types, such as dum-dum, incendiary, and explosive are equally available to rifles. So please confine the discussion to differences between pistol and rifles specifically, not the ammo which you are assuming is unique to each weapon type.

All else being equal (including the ammo type) the rifle will always prevail.

IMO:

Pistols advantage is not stopping power but deployment speed and close in manuverability (at melee ranges).

It's faster to deply and can be utilized more effectively at close range.

Using the same ammo type a rifle is always more effective at range... and up close (but not at melee ranges) a shotgun is the best choice. At melee ranges a pistol is the only effective option (sawed off shotgun can arguably be used but they're a fairly exotic weapon) other than a good knife.

I'm not claiming to be an expert... these are my opinions based on a lot of years of shooting (my father is a collector. Pistols (up to 44 Mag/45 NSR power levels), shotguns (including a sawed off that my father has a federal license to own) and lots of different rifles.

And regarding System Shock 2... I remember playing it when it was released and IMO it's fatal flaw was timing. At that time first person shooters were still new and extremely HOT. Most hardcore gamers were totally into twitch... and the user interface for SS2 was as clunky feeling as a Yugo compared to a Ferrari.

I never gave the game a chance, and (after I returned the game) actually wrote a letter to the authors telling them to fix the control scheme and maybe they'd have something.

These days I've learned that a lot of weird control schemes work just fine if you give them a chance... but back then we were all pretty smitten with the level of immersion that mouse/kb control gave you in a FPS environment.

Exactly.

The only shooter I've seen that emulates this reasonably is Medal of Honor. Nobody in this game uses a pistol when they have a loaded rifle handy. (Except maybe snipers on the move)

Pistols are most effective at arms reach, anything beyond that is longarm territory.

On Desu Ex and SS2:

SS2 is a great game. Was it better than Deus Ex? I'd say they are about equal. Both are similar in approach (armed conflict isn't the focus, the story is) and both did it approximately as well.

I loved SS and SS2 for the atmosphere, but the artificial restrictions on ammo and equipment and the unrestrained spawning annoyed me at times. It's easy to get stuck in the endgame without ammo.

Deus Ex had a great story and the graphics were good for the time. Things that annoyed me were the "tickle me elmo guns" (needing to upgrade a weapon to make it useful was just a plain DUMB idea) and the railroading they had to do to keep the game manageable. The cybermodification angle was interesting and I actually thought they did a good job with it. I enjoyed this game a lot, but it just felt unfinished to me.

SS2 felt a lot more polished to me.

Ditto. However there was an annoying aspect to Dues Ex's aiming system that kinda seemed dumb to me. The time based accuracy parameter. It's like: "I'm a super nano-augmented special agent that breezed through all my combat and technical training classes. Please stand still for 5 seconds so i can shoot you..." I know it's trying to simulate realism, but it just didn't work out well IMO. On my second run through, i actually cheated my stats up to what i thought were "acceptable" figures from the start and ignored the skill point bonuses. SS2's system (bullets go where you want them to and damage is calculated) was much better.