Where are all the guns?

Ironically, my Apex is currently inundated with guns right now @_@
Like.... I add dual machine pistols(very efficient is energy consuming.... also made it the weapon I use when healing due to ranged stopping power allowing me to slow down an enemy whilst I heal).

Then I found a variety of snipers, assaults rifles, shotguns.... I'm not at two rocket launchers too, in fact.
Then.... I found the damned Tesla's Wrath and oh god I love it(the innate glow makes it my go-to night operation weapon).

At some point I found one cartillage gun and I admit I found it okay combined with my blue-grade machine pistol(allowing me to perform lightning and poison debuffs both at the same time on enemies) but then I found ANOTHER cartillage gun and gosh are the things deadly when dual-wielded. It was the first time I dropped my blue lightning machine pistol I'd managed to keep since the early game(like said, lightning debuff combined with other elemental debuff) from my dual-pistol because those ricochets poison bone darts are really strong when coupled together.

Literally, my three main weapons sets are such:
Long range sniping: Tesla's Wrath
Rocket jumping/high mobility ranged combat: dual cartillage gun.
And only when I'm out of energy do I switch to my melee build: handaxe and shield.
(Generally, the shield allow me to tank blows just enough for energy to ring up online again, whilst the axe chops can deal very decent one-hit damages in the meanwhile(I found a particularly beefy one, not even an elemental one, that hits harder than some spears).)

With rocket jumpss and dual pistols though, there's moments where I feel like the rocketeer which was pretty awesome..

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Guns are indeed in the game all right. I'm sorry you had bad luck finding some though so I'll thus be wishing you good luck finding more.
Else, like others have said you could try rolling a novakid character. I recall suprisingly good results when I decided, for giggles, to try running through the Erchius mines with dual crafted iron revolves.
As it turns out, the crafted pistols are VERY good when dual wielded together(just be careful for that energy bar and you'll be okay). I highly recommend them well above the iron assault rifle(unless they changed it's stat, it's sadly comparable to low tiers machine pistols.... except take both of your hands).

 

I actually found a half decent assault rifle with an epic secondary fire mode. Shame it's 2-handed though. Have to swap to my 1-handed rubbish pistol and flashlight to see when it's gets dark, which is a pain. A 1-handed gun like that assault rifle would be great.

EDIT

There's still an over reliance on melee in Starbound though, which makes no sense to me considering the theme of the game. At least I can sell all those damn swords, daggers and staves. Good god, if No Mans Sky does the same I really will lose my shit.

 

Some 2-handed guns have flashlights. In caves, it is better to have it on a shotgun. Preferabily one that fires quickly.

 

I dunno. Maybe in the early tiers, but the more I'm progressing... the more I find myself relying on melee only when I'm out of energy.

Which tends to be very short which, in the meanwhile, my shield can tank most enemy attacks before I can switch to ranged again once energy is "online" again.

Granted, like I said, I got ridiculously lucky with drops. What with Tesla's Wrath and having dual cartillage guns. Heck, I even have a tentacle gun somewhere in there which I don't use because I'm not super fond of the style.

Can second. Flashlight shotguns are a boon to the spelunking player.