[Fyron]

It is not quite as strong pound for pound as the APB, but it has other advantages. It is cheaper. It is smaller, so there can be more of them, and you might be able to get less wasted damage with the Last shot that destroys each ship because of that. Also, in some situations the fact that there are more shots done might lead to more damage done overall due to differences in number of hits with MBs as opposed to APBs, with the right combination of offense and defense bonuses on each side. And then there is the missing more at max range with ABB (max range 8) than with MB (max range 6), which is not much of an issue if your ships use Optimal Range and not an issue if they use Point Blank.