So I was looking through the MA tier list that was on here along with Kyudo, and it put me into an absolute spiral of analyzing the eagletech survivalist, and now, I want to talk about it.
This weapon is pretty crazy, but looking at it, it seems relatively humble. At base, it's a combo crossbow/rifle which both use the archery skill to fire, and while it comes with a reduced ammo capacity, no slots, and standard quality, at 500eb, this thing is a monster. At 500eb, you can tech upgrade it to EQ for 500eb in mats, and if using the most recent DLC as a baseline for what a tech would charge, that'd only be another 250eb for the time, meaning it only has one less acc than a normal bow, and we have ways to patch up acc now, especially for aimed shots.
There's two things that need to be touched on here; reinforced string and range table modification. Now that both sides of this beast can hit 5d6, you effectively have any two range tables at 5d6 that you would like, and with range table modification, you can make those two tables anything you want. Full 13m-100m can be in the 13/14 range, which makes aimed shotting at those ranges so much easier. Hell, the integrated scope turns that 51m-100m range back into a DV 13 again, and that's just another 200eb to pick up two range modifications. It can even load whatever ammo it wants without the need for ammunition compatibility internals.
And as for that exotic ammo, it's very important to remember that (cross)bows do not need to load ammo like normal weapons, so they can pick out whatever ammunition is the best for the current job. Armor Piercing, High Performance, Air Hypo, Hyper Expansive, Explosive, all of them can be selected at will for whatever you need to do. Air Hypo needs particular notice, as thanks to all of the new drugs in SoF45, you can play a debuffer character very easily, firing out Mortalis rounds because you are history's greatest monster. And for bullet dodgers, you can load up the rifle portion with High Velocity. Access to all the best ammo at a variety of range brackets is just crazy good.
None of this is even going into Kyudo, which was what sparked this whole thing. I think Kyudo with the eagletech is interesting, but I also think the first round of combat is the most important, so losing that first round to set up is rough. But...7d6 headshots. Also with regular or battle rifle range tables, you're very unlikely to get into a situation where your kyudo stance will be disrupted unless someone aims for your hand, and you can fire off aimed shots to regain luck (or just dump 2 luck per shot) very easily. I'd almost say it's worth it for that alone, 6 ranks in Kyudo is almost just two additional ranks in archery if you're always aimed shotting (rough once you start facing bullet dodgers).
So yeah, I just think this weapon is pretty neato now, and think people should play around with it.