I checked out all the pistols. I used them all in VR and used the NC and TR pistols as a stalker in actual fighting before I was distracted by flash turbo. I actually have no experience with stalker cloak so I probably wasn't the best to try them out.
NC: The weakest of the three by far, it shoots slow, has a ton of recoil and can't plink at long range. It has a cool reload animation though. It also can't fit a silencer. I'm not sure if I even got a kill with it or not. Actually I remember ambushing a few TR as they floated off the lift pad. I got a few kills with it. One must have been damaged already because he died in one shot while he was floating upwards.
TR: The best pistol hands down. Sounds cool, simple to use as it's fully auto, can be suppressed, and gets kills up close really easy and can also reach out farther than the NC pistol. I got a number of kills with it while using the stalker cloak in the biolab by waiting for people to run past me. I also killed an NC on the ledge that's barely walkable around the landing pad before he could react and he was looking right at me at point blank.
VS: Could be the best pistol when used by a group. I didn't test this in a real fight but I shot it a decent amount in VR. It has a cool firing sound. It's charge can be held indefinitely, which means if you use this pistol you can hold the charge while camping a door for someone to run through. It kills really, really fast with charge and then click spams. The charge has a pretty big recoil, but it can be compensated for easily, at least in the VR. It has really quick damage dropoff so it's less useful at range but if you catch someone with the charge at close range they will probably go down. It won't be hard to do that either as you can hold the charge indefinitely. The downside is you walk slower with the charge but it's a camping weapon for sure so it doesn't really matter. It's probably not a good stalker cloak weapon but it will be great for people who need a weapon to back up a long range primary indoors because if you land a burst at close range it kills as fast as a primary weapon. Basically the charge does what the NC's shotgun pistol does with a big burst of damage and then it has the two shot burst mode too. While the damage dropoff is severe, it still felt better at range than the NC shotgun pistol when you unleash the charge and then spam the bursts as fast as you can. The non-charged bursts have big gap between them which lowers the rate of fire a lot but you can't have the best of everything, just don't tell that to the VS guy complaining in the VR room about how it's non charge mode is not better than the commissioner. Some people just can't be satisfied short of a ZOEquivalent.
IF anyone was wondering, turbo flash is still terrible but fun. If only it could be decent for the NC team effort and still fun, I'd drive it even more of my playtime on live with the new resource thingy. .42 KDR, my poor little test server session score. I chain pulled flashes almost the whole time and went infantry hunting. It was around a biolab which is both good and yet mostly bad for flash; mostly bad because most of the squishy infantry are above you and the vehicles that prey on your kind are on your level looking for targets. It has potential to be good too though because the infantry spawn at the ground and for a few seconds they are very vulnerable to being roadkilled as they make their way towards the float pad. I hope the devs who were in that zone took note how terrible I did with my turbo flash. While it wasn't a great base for it, I actually drive it more than anyone else I know on Emerald and I wasn't failing on purpose because I was trying for flash directives. Maybe I can convince them turbo should be innate in the flash by giving them honest combat usage data that shows it needs some fixing up.
I also noticed that hit detection is a bit off for the flash. I drove through several enemy pedestrians without getting bonus points. My video game knowledge clearly tells me this is not working as intended. This is especially unfortunate as my flash seems to find it's way into the back of whatever poor fellow on my team that I pass within ten feet of, leaving me to spam V8 in the hope that it will forestall any potential vendetta against myself that would leave me being shot off my noble steed if I happen to stick around long enough for that friendly roadkill to be resurrected by a nearby medical personnel.
I even did a perfect backflip right over a magrider who was gunning for me and landed behind him. It's too bad I had the shotgun at the time or I would have put a dent in his rear armor before he turned around and one shot me. The magrider pilot was duly impressed, filled with the camaraderie that is refreshing about the test server. It would be cool if flashes had a secondary weapon option that was like a TOW missile. You'd only get one per flash but it would do a good chunk of damage if you shot it at a tank's butt. As much as an MBT AP round? If turbo was innate it could go in the vehicle slot turbo, wraith and scout radar currently exclude each other from... A man can dream...