Of course, if you have all the time in the world, then go with the ammo conservation. If weapon A does twice the damage per shot of weapon B, but weapon B shoots 10 round bursts in VATS, well, you do the maths. The second is that basically while they do less damage per shot, they might do a lot more per second or per VATS burst. Or if you find a SMG with Explosive, well, shooting 10 rounds with the extra explosive damage in one second helps a lot more than if it were only like 2 rounds in a second with an Explosive bolt-action rifle. If you find an Irradiated Minigun, well, that's 25 to 100 (depending on your perks) extra points of radiation damage PER BULLET, and it pretty much pwns any human. The most obvious game changer are legendary effects.
