*good advice*
So, with many AP's available to you, you usually have the opportunity to either shoot more or hit melee and retreat as far as you can. The opponent wastes his own AP's in closing to you, I had plenty of fights early on where the opponent didn't have enough AP's to hit my character after closing in, which allowed me to kill it rather effortlessly by hitting and retreating. Do also note that you can have more AP's than ten even if interface only shows up to ten.
I believe you can have up to 15 AP.
Fun fact: picking fast shot + Having 10 in agility + bonus rate of fire + action boy/girl + sniffing 2 vials of jet result in you being able to fire several small guns and energy weapons 6 times a round.
Other fun fact: having 10 in agility + action boy/girl + 2*jet + bonus hand to hand attacks + slayer + mega power fist produces the same kind of result, but with melee attacks (although people tend to fly to the other side of the screen every hit or two).
Final fun fact: Gifted is probably the most overpowered trait you can pick, especially in Fallout 2 where it basically allows you to have 10 in every attribute but luck by late-mid/early-late game.
EDIT - Bonus fun fact: although guns like the gauss rifle or the pulse rifle or other Fallout 2 late game weapons pack hell of a punch, they will never be quite as powerful as close range burst fire from a P90 or a bozar.
Personal records are 690 against a deathclaw for the former and over 1050 against an enclave soldier for the latter.
In pure damage numbers, sure the autofire weapons are unmatchable. Of course, non-autofire weapons can crit far more often then bursts due to being aimed, plus they'll have better crits since there's an aimed shot bonus on that roll as well. 690 beats 90, but not 90+instant death, or even 0+instant death.
That's part of the reason you can actually beat the game totally unarmed. Armor may reduce your punches damage to 0, but it does nothing about the instant death crit coming with it.
Really though, unless you're purposefully handicapping yourself, you'll be a god by late game no matter what you do.
