Is there any advantage to researching all addons for a weapon type?

Question

I have the legendary gunsmith, who allows you to customise your weapons.

Once I started playing around with it, I realised that developing certain addons for one weapon would make them available to others in the same type - for instance, scopes & suppressors are shared between sniper and assault rifles, and certain ammo / magazines and stocks.

I realised that I was able to research the same addon (for example a foregrip) for two different assault rifles... so I was essentially paying twice for the same thing, since I can just customise rifle B to add rifle A's foregrip. However, not researching the foregrip for rifle B blocked further progress.

Considering that I'd end up researching the same thing more than once, it seems like a waste of GMP to research everything in a weapon type - is there an advantage to this, or would focussing on a single weapon (UN ARC for instance) be a more cost effective strategy?

Are there any addons for that weapon type that I would not be able to acquire if I chose a single weapon to develop?

Answer 1

First, higher-upgraded weapons don't just come with more crud stuck to them. They also come with more places to stick crud to them (and some intrinsic boosts separate from their customizable parts). You can't put a foregrip on a gun unless the version of the gun you're customizing has an undermount slot, and as far as I can tell, everything with an undermount slot comes with a foregrip stuck to it by default.

That said, there are also things you'd want to put on a gun that are only available from other guns' upgrade trees. For example, if you want to stick a tier-2 suppressor on your Renov, you're not going to find it in the Renov's upgrade tree. You'll need to research a different weapon's upgrades to find one, like the M2000-D or the AM MRS-4.