ToME WikiShrikeDeCil The saber does 20-to-50, the rifle does 5-to-50. 'Combat' at 30, 'Shooting' at 10 -> the pistol and the rifle both are worlds above the 4 hits I was getting with the saber.
_Besides_ the power difference between the saber and the pistol, there's something either unexplained or in-obvious about the mechanism here. With the saber and 30 levels of combat, I have to back-and-tap the master sarge a long, long flipping way. With 4x blows, thats something like 160 hits with the saber. With the rifle, it is closer to three shots. 160x50 -> 8000 damage. 50x3 is 150. I have _less_ shooting skill.
Just saying that some notice would be handy. Like the (x4) on 2.3.3 crossbows. Or discussion under help I guess.
Additionally, the firepower of the pistol/rifle seems too high anyway. I was level 11 (combat30,defense20,stealth0,haste50) and struggling to kill anything that might possibly drop a pistol. Wandering up and down, fleeing screaming when mobbed. So I finally get a pistol and a point of shooting -> immediate sprint to the basement (getting the rifle and the body armor, which is correctly ided btw) en route. It is taking actions - I'm past the point that the free-firing was fixed here in 1.0, but even sergeant majors and colonels don't break the pattern of fffffffffff. Well, unless I stop to eat. 
Boots, caps, tshirts all seem to 'stack' also. Carrying around 8 unidentified tshirts 
This was fun, thanks! On to 3.0.0a9 and trying DG's module for now!
NeilStevens: Maybe I need to make the senior officers use a smarter shooting AI, instead of a random one, heh.
Update: Saber boosted as mentioned in wiki:Self:Modules/E-Team/BugReport10