Lasers vs Accelerated?

[doubleskulls]

I can see there is some debate among more experienced players about whether accelerated weapons or lasers are better. I'm new to X2 and haven't made much progress so far, but I don't want to fall into the newbie trap some people are talking about. From what I can see it certainly is not clear cut. 

• Armour
  • Accelerated weapons do 5 penetration and lasers do 6 more destruction. 
  • For 3 shots with a rifle, Accelerated weapons are better up to armour 13. i.e. they do more damage on average than a laser would. 
  • For 2 shots with a rifle, Accelerated weapons are better up to armour 44
  • Armour can be stripped by other means (e.g. demolition grenades). 
• Weight/Magazine - Lasers are lighter, but you probably need to carry more magazines, as they have fewer shots. I think therefore this is advantage to Accelerated Weapons as you get more shots before having to reload.
• Lasers require alerium to produce, both require alloys. 
• Accuracy bonus - although this seems good, with a training centre do we really have a lot of soldiers with low enough accuracy to benefit? 
• Shotgun has only 3 penetration and sniper is 2. Laser Machine guns have 5 higher range, so have 7.5% better hit chance <20 tiles. 
• Lasers do double damage to terrain, so are better for obstacle removal. 

That's sort of making me think that Laser Shotguns, Sniper Rifles and Machine Guns are better, but for Pistols and Rifles accelerated versions are. I can see an argument for laser pistols too, for terrain clearance, but I shoot enemies with pistols much more often than I clear terrain. 

Am I missing something in the analysis? 

From a game perspective they are pretty close, which seems odd. They are very close in the tech tree, and I think their performance reflects that. However I think it would be better for the game, and particularly casual players, if Lasers were further up the tech tree and just clearly an upgrade over accelerated. 

[Alienkiller]

The Difference is easy:

Lasers are lighter, have better Accuracy, an similar or little bit more Damage-Output like Accelerated-Weapons and get with an later Upgrade some more cool Advancements. As well as they can be equiped to Private-Soldiers, which get new to the Job. Therefore this first Energy-Weapon need some more Materials then the Accelerated-Upgrades to Standard-Weapons and have reduced Ammo for the Clips, until the Laser-Weapon-Upgrade get done.

Accelerated-Upgrade-Weapons from the Standard-Beginning-Weapons are heavyer, have an normal Accuracy, Recoils which reduces the Accuracy with to much Automatic-Fire, heavy Ammo-Clips, don´t have differnt Ammo-Variants and aren´t upgradeable / refitable to the next Version incl. the Ammo. Therefore they penetrate and destroy Protection-Vests / Protection-Suits Step by Step with good hits and only need one Alien-Material for the Upgrade / Buildup.

The Advantages and Disadvantages are well-adjusted. In that Case it belongs to the Player to make an Mix of Both or using only one of them until the Gauss-Weapons show up. That Decission is one of the many you have in the Game and make the Difference between Life and Death to the Soldiers.

As an Beta-Tester from the first Hour I can say, both Weapon-Types are good and we all have tested them in several Situations. But what we can´t do is to make an Decission for the Player, which is playing the Game earlyer or later.