There's also an NC sniper rifle the SAS-R that's listed on there, it's better than the basic sniper rifle in every respect except projectile speed (which means you have to lead slightly further). The only drawback is that you have to actually buy a scope for it, it only comes with ironsights default.
Umm, what? The SAS-R has exactly the same damage as the default LA80. The SAS-R gains a slightly faster reload speed and small RoF bonus, in exchange for a pretty hefty drop in projectile speed. That, plus the fact that it comes with ironsights, suggests it's designed to be a slightly closer-range weapon than the default rifle.
The projectile speed drop is pretty meaningless, the 10% difference just means the bullet arrives .26 seconds later, instead of .25 seconds later, if you could hit with one, you can generally hit with the other. It makes some difference at longer ranges because you have to adjust for a greater bullet drop, but this is not really a huge deal.
The reload speed is also pretty pointless, but the recocking speed (which I don't believe is shown on there) is not, you can recock the SAS-R quite a bit faster than you can recock the LA80, which makes a huge difference when you're trying to snipe a target that's moving around too much to hit in the head. If you hit someone in the chest, you need to hit them again in order to finish them off, with the SAS-R the faster recock which lets you fire your second shot faster, means that it's much easier to kill someone with two chest shots, while being ever so slightly more difficult to kill them with a headshot (at least with a scope you have to pay 100 certs for).
EDIT: Oh, and of course you've got the rocket pods, which make fighters incredibly good at just blowing apart clusters of infantry and such, they also work pretty well against other fighters and liberators if you get close and sneak up on them.
Only if they're not moving - the slow-firing rockets are utterly useless against anything that's mobile. A Lib has enough armour to react before the rockets kill them, though they'll be heavily damaged. And fighters are almost never stationary in combat.
Eh, I've done a try before you buy with them a few times and I never had that much trouble against moving targets (unless they were lightnings or something), in all honesty I never found them that great against vehicles, but they are better than the main guns. Where they really excel is at quickly hosing down clusters of infantry, you can rack up a hell of a lot of kills by blasting the rear of a sunderer. As for liberators, in my experience most liberators have to hover if they want to get a steady shot, especially if they're at the ceiling, if you come up behind them in a fighter while they're distracted, it can be pretty easy to get really close and then hammer into them with the rockets. Then when they inevitably start running away you can gun them down. It's by no means perfect, and it helps to have someone with you who can help finish them off, but it does do nothing but add to your killing power.
Also the air superiority gun seems to be better than the basic gun in every respect except ammo. It's better against aircraft, it's better against infantry, it's better against vehicles, but you do need to resupply pretty soon.
That's because hemmingjay mis-typed his values. Sorry, hemmingjay. The sheet actually gives values of:
Basic: 1700 Speed: 100
AV: 1500 Speed: 40
AA: 1275 Speed: 100
Note that all of them have a splash damage of 1000, so you're better off using the basic or AA rockets for infantry killing.
I was actually refering to the air superiority cannons on the fighters. They're slightly worse when strafing vehicles at a range, but better under most other circumstances.