With long guns, Mind Control Ray is killing everything in the game before they can even be mind controlled for more than a half second. It's best to give the Mind Control gun to a companion. 

The Hammer is completely bonkers broken and the gloop gun not only does great damage, but has one of the best crowd control effects in the game. 

im very curious to know if most of these comments are supernova-specific as it is obviously well-known that all other difficulties are way too ez

and, therefore, its all pretty superficial and highlights the primary problem to me:

the combat is too ez too early

As many said, and as we learn more, gotta make a quick update:

 

Since we are getting used to tinkering and science weapons, it turns out that the science hammer is ludicrously hilariously powerful. Just about any one of them are insanely powerful. I only learned about power attack with the hammer through the science weapons youtube video explaining how they work.

So, they're really more useful than you'd initially give any thought to, it's when you sit down and play with them do you really start figuring it out.