NC weapons finally hit hard

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by WarbirdTD

idiotic rant

You really are ignorant if you honestly think that the NC community was bitching about nothing.

Yes, I was speaking in general terms about the way NC weapons work. Obviously you don't get how recoil and weapon bloom works, or damage over time. In case you didn't realize, NC weapons may have more damage per bullet, but they fire slower, so they're not just a WIN button. Add in worse accuracy and the result is a weapon that has to be burst-fired to be used effectively.

Fact: NC weapons AS A WHOLE have 20%+ higher bloom rate when firing than TR or VS weapons do. Their recoil may be primarily vertical (lots of TR and VS weapons have vertical recoil, including most LMGs), but it's also higher on average than TR or VS weapons, and when that RNG for bloom throws your bullets everywhere, there's nothing controllable about that. The really only thing NC have is lower first-shot recoil, which is why I pointed out their relative effectiveness at longer ranges when on single-fire. And, as you pointed out, at ranges such as those, you're better off with a longer range weapon than a carbine or LMG anyhow.

Before you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe you should actually look at some actual weapon values. I'm just going to leave this for you here. Educate yourself: this is from the last patch so the values should be current.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...owsperpage=250

[ShadetheDruid]

Whether the really good players can use NC weapons well is irrelevent.

The problem is while a newbie can pick up and play with TR or VS weapons right away with no issues (up until the limit of their skill anyway), NC weapons give them a lot of trouble and puts them off investing in an NC character.

For every skilled player using the Gauss SAW to good effect, there's 10 newbies who either give up, or have to pay a bunch of certs/SC to get a useable weapon. Neither TR or VS have this issue.

[WarbirdTD]

You're either a very good troll or a massive idiot, but the jury's still out on that one. I see you have a link to a page that I used WHEN WRITING MY POST. "Actually," I'm pretty sure that I "actually" looked at those "actual" stats when I was responding to your tripe. You want to "actually" get in game and do some "actual" combat, you know, just to "actually" see how your piss-poor analysis works in the game? Or are you content to sit on less than 3 days of gameplay and less than a thousand kills to accompany your "research?"

@Shade, I don't see how you could reach this conclusion without any definitive evidence of new NC quitting in droves. Link to that please?

[Palerion]

Lol well, I'm strictly an LA player, and I love NC carbines. They do feel great as of late. The same goes for VS carbines, I love them. But I'm a TR player.

Apparently TR carbines, along side the Carv nerf, recieved their own little recoil nerf. They feel too recoil heavy, with not enough power to make up for the freaking annoying kick. It seems as though the tables have turned, and the formerly overpowered faction has become the one faction whose weapons, at least for light assault, suck. Not to mention they all look the same and sound like crap.

[Beerbeer]

Warbird, I think we're all entitled to our opinions. I know they don't always align, but don't insult everyone you don't agree with.

I really don't have a stake in the matter in regards to nerfing or preserving an advantage or edge, perceived or real, as I play multiple empires. Regardless, it is what we "believe" it is, and we agree to disagree. However, I tend to agree that the NC pop--on the servers I play on at least--have been shrinking with respect to the other empires during prime time. Whether this is due to an "imbalance," well, I don't know.

In fact, I don't believe anyone outside of Sony has good data on anything, but we will never see that data. So until hell freezes over, no one can say for certain one way or the other.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by WarbirdTD

You're either a very good troll or a massive idiot, but the jury's still out on that one. I see you have a link to a page that I used WHEN WRITING MY POST. "Actually," I'm pretty sure that I "actually" looked at those "actual" stats when I was responding to your tripe. You want to "actually" get in game and do some "actual" combat, you know, just to "actually" see how your piss-poor analysis works in the game? Or are you content to sit on less than 3 days of gameplay and less than a thousand kills to accompany your "research?"

@Shade, I don't see how you could reach this conclusion without any definitive evidence of new NC quitting in droves. Link to that please?

Sorry bro, dealing with a medical problem has been cutting down on my game time, but thanks for that. So let me ask you this, if you "actually" looked at the stats, how can you possibly post the blatantly biased crap you do? You carefully avoided answering my responses while focusing on making attacks on my character and my game time and kill count (which is hardly relevant as I play primarily AMS support anyhow).

Come back when you can respond like an adult instead of sputtering insults like a child. Until then, answering posts like the above is a waste of my time.

[KaskaMatej]

Originally Posted by Beerbeer

In fact, I don't believe anyone outside of Sony has good data on anything, but we will never see that data. So until hell freezes over, no one can say for certain one way or the other.

Believe it or not, if you will, but this data ( LINK ) is data-mined directly from game files.

It is as good as you get, it might be even better than what SOE has (which we might never know).

[WarbirdTD]

Palerion, the main problem with the TR weapons after the nerf is the first shot recoil multiplier, in addition to our recoil/rate of fire mixture. Instead of just changing the NC weapon characteristics and seeing how that worked out, they also nerfed the TR weapons, and it is certainly noticeable from a balance perspective.

NC weapons in competent hands (most will figure out how a weapon handles after a few fights) are relatively easy to correct for vertical recoil and a small first-shot kick, while the weapon damage delivers a ton of damage on target. TR weapons (the TRAC-5 specifically), by contrast have a strong kick to start off with and keep a higher than normal rate of fire going. In my opinion, this makes the TRAC-5 harder to handle and therefore more likely for a TR player to feather the trigger to keep the majority of bullets on target, which is definitely needed because they are doing less damage per bullet at the average engagement range.

Since this latest balance pass, I feel like the TR weapons should have been buffed to about 150@10m to account for the first-shot kick, in order to match the Time-to-kill of guns like the AF-19 (167@10m), GD-7F (143@10m and 845rpm with only a 2x kick? come on), and AC-X11 (200!?!@10m). My feeling right now is that our best gun to compete with the NC is the T5 AMC with the Advanced Forward Grip, or the TRAC-5 S (but good luck with the recoil). They'll still beat you at most ranges, but hey, it's the best we can do right now. Against the VS, I'm not quite sure what to tell you. The Solstice SF and Solstice seem to simply be easier across the board compared to the T5 AMC or TRAC-5 S, so it will be personal preference there.

So the question is this.. is it balanced for the NC to have a recoil penalty and a minimal RoF penalty against our decreased damage and surprising first-shot kick? While it may seem like I'm picking the fly shit out of the pepper here, a first person shooter is really about the .1 or .2 seconds in which you died and the enemy didn't. It's all about the small tweaks, and when your balance guys nerf one and buff the other in the same patch, it's too easy to screw up balance.

[Palerion]

And is this issue being addressed to SOE? Is anyone complaining? Is SOE listening? I don't see why so much hell is raised over the underpowered NC weapons but nobody seems to mind this. It amazes me how well I can do with VS or NC weapons, then I go back to my TR guy, get the drop on someone, miss too many shots because of the ridiculous recoil, and he gets away. I had been wondering why it took 20 shots of my clip to kill a guy lately, eventually I discovered how many of them were missing. I hope someone speaks up.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by WarbirdTD

Palerion, the main problem with the TR weapons after the nerf is the first shot recoil multiplier, in addition to our recoil/rate of fire mixture. Instead of just changing the NC weapon characteristics and seeing how that worked out, they also nerfed the TR weapons, and it is certainly noticeable from a balance perspective.

NC weapons in competent hands (most will figure out how a weapon handles after a few fights) are relatively easy to correct for vertical recoil and a small first-shot kick, while the weapon damage delivers a ton of damage on target. TR weapons (the TRAC-5 specifically), by contrast have a strong kick to start off with and keep a higher than normal rate of fire going. In my opinion, this makes the TRAC-5 harder to handle and therefore more likely for a TR player to feather the trigger to keep the majority of bullets on target, which is definitely needed because they are doing less damage per bullet at the average engagement range.

Since this latest balance pass, I feel like the TR weapons should have been buffed to about 150@10m to account for the first-shot kick, in order to match the Time-to-kill of guns like the AF-19 (167@10m), GD-7F (143@10m and 845rpm with only a 2x kick? come on), and AC-X11 (200!?!@10m). My feeling right now is that our best gun to compete with the NC is the T5 AMC with the Advanced Forward Grip, or the TRAC-5 S (but good luck with the recoil). They'll still beat you at most ranges, but hey, it's the best we can do right now. Against the VS, I'm not quite sure what to tell you. The Solstice SF and Solstice seem to simply be easier across the board compared to the T5 AMC or TRAC-5 S, so it will be personal preference there.

So the question is this.. is it balanced for the NC to have a recoil penalty and a minimal RoF penalty against our decreased damage and surprising first-shot kick? While it may seem like I'm picking the fly shit out of the pepper here, a first person shooter is really about the .1 or .2 seconds in which you died and the enemy didn't. It's all about the small tweaks, and when your balance guys nerf one and buff the other in the same patch, it's too easy to screw up balance.

Wow, a legitimate response, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Warbird, the TR have a higher first-shot recoil kick, but the NC have a higher CoF bloom rate (20% moreso), and as you have reminded us several times, recoil is controllable (to an extent). Unfortunately, an NC player has no way of addressing the increased bloom to keep bullets on the target short of burst-firing more frequently than other empires would, and this reduces effective damage per second except at absolutely point-blank ranges. This can make mid-range combat difficult.

So I'll concede your point on first-shot recoil kick. Yes, after your first shot, your weapons take a significant jump, but in a fairly predictable manner, and the bloom rate on the weapon is slower. We've been discussing primarily carbines, but if we move the discussion to ARs, as I'm sure you're aware as you've "actually" looked at the statistics, TR have more vertical-recoil-only weapons than the NC do. So really, that recoil discussion can be pulled in any direction.

My interest is addressing the CoF bloom issue as that RNG is not really fun for anyone firing a weapon. I really believe that all weapons in a class, regardless of faction should have the approximately the same CoF bloom rates. With fire rate, bullet damage, recoil pattern, clip size, and first-round kickback recoil values, there's still plenty of room to differentiate weapons.

Let's face a reality; most NC who have the option and have spent some time with the majority of their weapon options carry either a GD-7 carbine, GR-22 AR, or EM1 LMG. Why is this? The GD-7 and GR-22 are each one of only 2 weapons in each class that have a CoF bloom rate comparable to the majority of TR or VS weapons, and the EM1 is the only weapon in its class with an TR/VS bloom rate. This, coupled with an unusually high rate of fire, make them versatile.

So the problem here is that the 3 undisputed kings of NC infantry weapons all share the same feature; low CoF bloom rate, high rate of fire, and low bullet damage. This sounds a lot like a certain other empire's weapons, doesn't it?

As stated, I think that the higher CoF bloom rate on other NC weapons should be reduced to match the 0.05 ADS / 0.1 Hip Fire spread per bullet the other factions enjoy and then the rate of fire lowered slightly on the GD-7, GR-22, and EM1. As I said in my original post, weapons like these are really an anomaly and don't really fit with the NC weapon flavor. Trust me, I love those bullet hoses, but it feels wrong.

There needs to be a reason to use the other NC weapons. I think that bloom rate should be a value that is variable based upon class of weapon, not empire, as it's a roll of the dice that effectively negates player skill.

Alright, I've got presents to wrap now that my kid is asleep.

[WarbirdTD]

Electro, let's clear the air here. You called my original post ignorant (because I shouldn't ever disagree with the squeaky wheel, right?) and quoted me out of context in your first post on the thread. I took exception to it and responded in kind. The second part of my second post was explaining why your definition of situational and mine don't coincide. A weapon is not "situational" because it is serviceable in all situations, while being better at long and short ranges. A weapon is situational because it can only be used in a certain situation. You discarded that response as well, and this time you even called me an idiot. Believe it or not, that kind of behavior is likely to illicit an "Is this guy just trolling me or is he serious?" response.
If you don't want personal attacks to occur in a thread, you should probably heed your own advice.

In regards to the content of your post, it is my opinion (after testing the weapons quite a lot) that your remark about me posting "blatantly biased crap" is pretty unfair. Let's compare notes about the Gauss SAW and the TMG-50, which I believe to be TR's best answer to the SAW, due to it having the best damage out of all of our LMGs. However, the TTK seems to still be imbalanced. Both have negligible horizontal recoil with the correct attachments, but that's about where the comparison ends. The question is whether .1 less recoil, .15 less kick, and 77 more rpm is a good trade-off for 33 less damage per bullet (@10m). Remember the effect that combining a higher rate of fire with your recoil and kick has, wherein every time you fire, you need to correct for recoil. Therefore, higher rate of fire naturally means more of a chance for inaccuracy. I think, in terms of ease of control, higher RoF + slightly less kick + less recoil = lower RoF + slightly more kick + more recoil, in this particular case. And thus, the accuracy between the guns should be almost exactly equal, right? And that means, if my thought process is correct, that our best hope for beating the NC in close quarters does a glaring 33 less damage-per-bullet, and gets 25 less rounds in its clip for its trouble.

These are the kinds of inconsistencies that I'm talking about, and a lot of TR are upset with. More proof? Check out the NC carbines that have superior RoF or do damage that would be more consistent with LMGs. The GD-7F has the fastest RoF (845 rpm; tied with Serpent) available to the Carbine group (TR's fastest is 800 rpm). The AC-X11 has 200 damage @10m, meaning it does just as much as the Gauss SAW or the Reaper DMR. The TR have exactly zero guns available that do 200 damage per shot, yet the NC have 200 damage guns for medic, LA, Engi, and HA? Something's wrong here, and not every playstyle is being met.

[Palerion]

Couldn't have said it better myself. I feel like SOE keeps switching it up, always making sure to leave one faction underpowered for one reason or another. I don't know why when I look at the stats, but it seems like the GD-7F is so much easier to control than the LC2 Lynx, even with its higher rate of fire. It simply doesn't seem right, and when I look at the stats I don't get it, but when I play with the two weapons, it is very apparent. NC's bloom needs to be dropped obviously, and... I don't know what, but something needs to be done about the TR's weapons. They just seem lacking when compared to the other factions' armaments.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by WarbirdTD

Electro, let's clear the air here. You called my original post ignorant (because I shouldn't ever disagree with the squeaky wheel, right?) and quoted me out of context in your first post on the thread. I took exception to it and responded in kind. The second part of my second post was explaining why your definition of situational and mine don't coincide. A weapon is not "situational" because it is serviceable in all situations, while being better at long and short ranges. A weapon is situational because it can only be used in a certain situation. You discarded that response as well, and this time you even called me an idiot. Believe it or not, that kind of behavior is likely to illicit an "Is this guy just trolling me or is he serious?" response.
If you don't want personal attacks to occur in a thread, you should probably heed your own advice.

In regards to the content of your post, it is my opinion (after testing the weapons quite a lot) that your remark about me posting "blatantly biased crap" is pretty unfair. Let's compare notes about the Gauss SAW and the TMG-50, which I believe to be TR's best answer to the SAW, due to it having the best damage out of all of our LMGs. However, the TTK seems to still be imbalanced. Both have negligible horizontal recoil with the correct attachments, but that's about where the comparison ends. The question is whether .1 less recoil, .15 less kick, and 77 more rpm is a good trade-off for 33 less damage per bullet (@10m). Remember the effect that combining a higher rate of fire with your recoil and kick has, wherein every time you fire, you need to correct for recoil. Therefore, higher rate of fire naturally means more of a chance for inaccuracy. I think, in terms of ease of control, higher RoF + slightly less kick + less recoil = lower RoF + slightly more kick + more recoil, in this particular case. And thus, the accuracy between the guns should be almost exactly equal, right? And that means, if my thought process is correct, that our best hope for beating the NC in close quarters does a glaring 33 less damage-per-bullet, and gets 25 less rounds in its clip for its trouble.

These are the kinds of inconsistencies that I'm talking about, and a lot of TR are upset with. More proof? Check out the NC carbines that have superior RoF or do damage that would be more consistent with LMGs. The GD-7F has the fastest RoF (845 rpm; tied with Serpent) available to the Carbine group (TR's fastest is 800 rpm). The AC-X11 has 200 damage @10m, meaning it does just as much as the Gauss SAW or the Reaper DMR. The TR have exactly zero guns available that do 200 damage per shot, yet the NC have 200 damage guns for medic, LA, Engi, and HA? Something's wrong here, and not every playstyle is being met.

• I responded to a statement by you that seemed to indicate that you felt that the NC faction had a lot of bad players that liked to complain on the forums. You seem to indicate I took that out of context but that's how I read it. If it's not what you meant, than fine, but that's how I read it and that's why I called you ignorant. Blanket statements like that are common from idiots and trolls (to use your own words) because they have this false impression that their faction really is somehow superior to the other factions in skill.

• You tore into my post because I was speaking about the way NC weapons in general, and honestly, reading your responses that aren't just a string of insults, seems to tell me that you and I have different concepts of what long, medium, and short range in combat really are. I consider short range to be essentially point-blank, as in, if you put your cross-hairs center-mass on a target, and hip fire, it'll be dead before the bloom is large enough to mean anything. Medium range are the ranges where you'd prefer to ADS your target if possible. Long range is where your second bullet will essentially never strike the target and you have to fire single-fire and recover from recoil before firing again.
  
  Very little combat with carbines and the like happens at long ranges because it's just not optimal. Usually there's something closer to shoot. How often do you really have to single fire your carbine or AR to make shots land? At point-blank range, most NC weapons do well, as their Achilles heel currently, accuracy, is less of an issue. But the reality is that most combat occurs at medium range, and at short range it's pretty much just a matter of who starts firing first. So there's a problem there... if 10% of combat situations occur at long range, 60 percent at medium range, and 30% at short range, how is being reasonably effective at long or short ranges a real benefit in the majority of combat scenarios, particularly when the short range scenarios tend to primarily go to the player with the best reaction speed? Again, I'm talking about NC weapons, not the GD-7, so hold your tongue, I'll get to that. Also, when I said their weapons are situational, I meant that you have to use it differently in different situations, not that it was only effective in certain situations.

• Your point regarding bloom being per bullet is a fair one, and reminds me that I should edit my previous post about using flat bloom rates to accommodate, as my goal would be to have weapons within a class bloom at the same rate so the RNG doesn't apply more to one empire than the other.
  
  There's a reason I didn't want into gun X vs gun Y. There are a million combinations and anyone can make fairly arbitrary comparisons to "prove" any one gun is better than the other. But fine, I'll play. The TMG-50 takes 6 rounds to kill. The Gauss SAW takes 5 rounds to kill. The TMG fires 15% faster, takes 20% more bullets to kill. Gauss SAW TTK is 520 ms, the TMG-50 has a 480 ms TTK. This is where I would point out that the TR has a 480 ms TTK LMG, the MSW-R, which is actually your empire's "answer" to the SAW.
  
  However, I should also point out that while the TMG-50 is the slowest-firing, heaviest-hitting weapon of the TR LMGs, it's not meant to be a direct competitor of the SAW. It falls 40 ms behind in TTK at point-blank, but has less vertical recoil, less first-shot recoil, and a whopping 2 seconds faster reload time (kind of important when we're talking about point-blank combat). Reality check; most people have ping times higher than 40 ms.
  
  It seems a far trade-up to me. If you want pure TTK at 10m, you've got a gun for that in your arsenal. If you want something that packs more of a punch while you try to go for headshots in close quarters combat or pop off rounds at distant targets, you've got that too.
  

• Which brings me to my next point, some of the inconsistencies you describe. If you're looking for an argument from me on that one, you won't have it. I called those guns anomalies from the start and you seem only to agree. I'm not sure why we have carbines that fire faster than any TR carbines with good TTK times. I carry the GD-7 on almost all my loadouts because I can plink away with it at range reasonably well but also dish out a hailstorm at closer ranges. Higby said back in Beta that empires would get weapons with characteristics that strayed into the territory of what other empires specialized in, but would never best those empires in their specialty.
  
  So in short, the NC and VS should not have carbines that fire faster than any TR carbine, and there are legitimate examples too. NC have max bullet damage, TR have max fire rate, VS have max accuracy. Honestly, the TMG-50 is an example of how it should be, and other weapons including the GD-7 should follow suit.

• And for the record, I described your rant as idiotic, your statement as an ignorant one, and in response again I said that you must indeed be ignorant if you stand by your statement. I did not actually call you an idiot as you complain, though you called me one. It's petty to have to split hairs on something like this, but your statement wasn't entirely accurate.

• So, do you understand why I put that disclaimer at the bottom of my other thread? I was commenting on how NC weapons in general (not the anomaly weapons) are unforgiving unless they are properly burst-fired, because you don't send as many bullets down range and the accuracy is worse than equivalent weapons from other empires. If you lose that RNG lottery and one or two of those bullets miss, you're probably gonna die. It's a safer bet to go with a bullet hose that's more accurate. The NC are resorting to using freak outliers because the weapons actually designed around our design philosophy have glaring problems and are not very versatile or easy to use because of accuracy problems.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by WarbirdTD

Electro, let's clear the air here. You called my original post ignorant (because I shouldn't ever disagree with the squeaky wheel, right?) and quoted me out of context in your first post on the thread. I took exception to it and responded in kind. The second part of my second post was explaining why your definition of situational and mine don't coincide. A weapon is not "situational" because it is serviceable in all situations, while being better at long and short ranges. A weapon is situational because it can only be used in a certain situation. You discarded that response as well, and this time you even called me an idiot. Believe it or not, that kind of behavior is likely to illicit an "Is this guy just trolling me or is he serious?" response.
If you don't want personal attacks to occur in a thread, you should probably heed your own advice.

In regards to the content of your post, it is my opinion (after testing the weapons quite a lot) that your remark about me posting "blatantly biased crap" is pretty unfair. Let's compare notes about the Gauss SAW and the TMG-50, which I believe to be TR's best answer to the SAW, due to it having the best damage out of all of our LMGs. However, the TTK seems to still be imbalanced. Both have negligible horizontal recoil with the correct attachments, but that's about where the comparison ends. The question is whether .1 less recoil, .15 less kick, and 77 more rpm is a good trade-off for 33 less damage per bullet (@10m). Remember the effect that combining a higher rate of fire with your recoil and kick has, wherein every time you fire, you need to correct for recoil. Therefore, higher rate of fire naturally means more of a chance for inaccuracy. I think, in terms of ease of control, higher RoF + slightly less kick + less recoil = lower RoF + slightly more kick + more recoil, in this particular case. And thus, the accuracy between the guns should be almost exactly equal, right? And that means, if my thought process is correct, that our best hope for beating the NC in close quarters does a glaring 33 less damage-per-bullet, and gets 25 less rounds in its clip for its trouble.

These are the kinds of inconsistencies that I'm talking about, and a lot of TR are upset with. More proof? Check out the NC carbines that have superior RoF or do damage that would be more consistent with LMGs. The GD-7F has the fastest RoF (845 rpm; tied with Serpent) available to the Carbine group (TR's fastest is 800 rpm). The AC-X11 has 200 damage @10m, meaning it does just as much as the Gauss SAW or the Reaper DMR. The TR have exactly zero guns available that do 200 damage per shot, yet the NC have 200 damage guns for medic, LA, Engi, and HA? Something's wrong here, and not every playstyle is being met.

• I responded to a statement by you that seemed to indicate that you felt that the NC faction had a lot of bad players that liked to complain on the forums. You seem to indicate I took that out of context but that's how I read it. If it's not what you meant, than fine, but that's how I read it and that's why I called you ignorant. Blanket statements like that are common from idiots and trolls (to use your own words) because they have this false impression that their faction really is somehow superior to the other factions in skill.

• You tore into my post because I was speaking about the way NC weapons in general, and honestly, reading your responses that aren't just a string of insults, seems to tell me that you and I have different concepts of what long, medium, and short range in combat really are. I consider short range to be essentially point-blank, as in, if you put your cross-hairs center-mass on a target, and hip fire, it'll be dead before the bloom is large enough to mean anything. Medium range are the ranges where you'd prefer to ADS your target if possible. Long range is where your second bullet will essentially never strike the target and you have to fire single-fire and recover from recoil before firing again.
  
  Very little combat with carbines and the like happens at long ranges because it's just not optimal. Usually there's something closer to shoot. How often do you really have to single fire your carbine or AR to make shots land? At point-blank range, most NC weapons do well, as their Achilles heel currently, accuracy, is less of an issue. But the reality is that most combat occurs at medium range, and at short range it's pretty much just a matter of who starts firing first. So there's a problem there... if 10% of combat situations occur at long range, 60 percent at medium range, and 30% at short range, how is being reasonably effective at long or short ranges a real benefit in the majority of combat scenarios, particularly when the short range scenarios tend to primarily go to the player with the best reaction speed? Again, I'm talking about NC weapons, not the GD-7, so hold your tongue, I'll get to that. Also, when I said their weapons are situational, I meant that you have to use it differently in different situations, not that it was only effective in certain situations.

• Your point regarding bloom being per bullet is a fair one, and reminds me that I should edit my previous post about using flat bloom rates to accommodate, as my goal would be to have weapons within a class bloom at the same rate so the RNG doesn't apply more to one empire than the other.
  
  There's a reason I didn't want into gun X vs gun Y. There are a million combinations and anyone can make fairly arbitrary comparisons to "prove" any one gun is better than the other. But fine, I'll play. The TMG-50 takes 6 rounds to kill. The Gauss SAW takes 5 rounds to kill. The TMG fires 15% faster, takes 20% more bullets to kill. Gauss SAW TTK is 520 ms, the TMG-50 has a 480 ms TTK. This is where I would point out that the TR has a 480 ms TTK LMG, the MSW-R, which is actually your empire's "answer" to the SAW.
  
  However, I should also point out that while the TMG-50 is the slowest-firing, heaviest-hitting weapon of the TR LMGs, it's not meant to be a direct competitor of the SAW. It falls 40 ms behind in TTK at point-blank, but has less vertical recoil, less first-shot recoil, and a whopping 2 seconds faster reload time (kind of important when we're talking about point-blank combat). Reality check; most people have ping times higher than 40 ms.
  
  It seems a far trade-up to me. If you want pure TTK at 10m, you've got a gun for that in your arsenal. If you want something that packs more of a punch while you try to go for headshots in close quarters combat or pop off rounds at distant targets, you've got that too.
  

• Which brings me to my next point, some of the inconsistencies you describe. If you're looking for an argument from me on that one, you won't have it. I called those guns anomalies from the start and you seem only to agree. I'm not sure why we have carbines that fire faster than any TR carbines with good TTK times. I carry the GD-7 on almost all my loadouts because I can plink away with it at range reasonably well but also dish out a hailstorm at closer ranges. Higby said back in Beta that empires would get weapons with characteristics that strayed into the territory of what other empires specialized in, but would never best those empires in their specialty.
  
  So in short, the NC and VS should not have carbines that fire faster than any TR carbine, and there are legitimate examples too. NC have max bullet damage, TR have max fire rate, VS have max accuracy. Honestly, the TMG-50 is an example of how it should be, and other weapons including the GD-7 should follow suit.

• And for the record, I described your rant as idiotic, your statement as an ignorant one, and in response again I said that you must indeed be ignorant if you stand by your statement. I did not actually call you an idiot as you complain, though you called me one. It's petty to have to split hairs on something like this, but your statement wasn't entirely accurate.

• So, do you understand why I put that disclaimer at the bottom of my other thread? I was commenting on how NC weapons in general (not the anomaly weapons) are unforgiving unless they are properly burst-fired, because you don't send as many bullets down range and the accuracy is worse than equivalent weapons from other empires. If you lose that RNG lottery and one or two of those bullets miss, you're probably gonna die. It's a safer bet to go with a bullet hose that's more accurate. The NC are resorting to using freak outliers because the weapons actually designed around our design philosophy have glaring problems and are not very versatile or easy to use because of accuracy problems. I can't say I entirely agree with SOE's solution of nerfing the TR weapons while simultaneously buffing the NC weapons, but it's fairly obvious that NC weapons (again, as a whole) needed some help.

With that, I think I've made my point. You can agree or disagree, but either way, I'm done with this thread.