So far for hoards of enemies (zerg rushes) there's only grenades, charges, or fire to stop hoards effectively. But all of these are incredibly slow, and a bit difficult to use. I recently had a pretty big colony wiped out by a squirrel attack (like 50 of them!) and it was too much for 7 guys armed to the teeth. As a last ditch effort, I tried lighting my main door ways on fire, but that took so long that they all got through before burning. Would be nice to have some indiscriminate guns, like a flame thrower (short range, maybe 13 blocks, but hits anything in the way) an improved shotgun (having an actual spread, instead of 1 fat bullet. Could also use a damage buff to go with it, if it was this way, maybe a range Nerf)
Grenades and blast charges DO work, but they take so much time to prep, and its very easy to mess up, especially when dealing with a hectic hoard. Would be great to have something effective for them, which can be use on the fly, also, an option to not have melee completely disable using fire-arms would be nice. That was the main thing which UTTERLY destroyed my colony, since squirrels outran them, outnumbered them, the guns they had were useless since they could hardly get shots off before being in melee range, and being stun locked into being unable to run away.