Officially, huh?
So many people using a bad weapon doing so well.
Thank goodness they aren't using a good weapon.

Also, point: In order to keep overall balance, the HMG will need to be adjusted along with the rifles.

If these changes were to be put into effect, the HMG range needs to be dropped to "close" status. HMG's dispersion is not enough to reduce it's effectiveness at "short" range. Assault variant rifles should be able to out DPS an HMG at the edge of it's optimal, and it can't do that when after 1 second of firing the HMG's spread has shrunk enough to hit you with almost every bullet. That, or instead of getting a tighter spread the longer it fires, it should get wider the more you shoot (as any person thinking about it logically would have made it from the start) making it less effective at range unless you fire in bursts. Also, if this happens, the time it takes for the circular crosshairs to change from full size to normal size should be around 2 seconds and the crosshair should start at about half it's current size to allow for expansion.

You are forgetting other factors that reduce a weapons effectiveness. Simply putting a range/dps model up there an calling weapons good or bad is not the way to go. Accuracy, falloff, everything needs to be taken into account....

Option 1.

The HMG is supposed to be able to shred you. Heavies are the staple of defense and should require more effort to take down. If heavies could chase you down easily and jump heights higher than their kneecaps, then we could talk.

It already out ranges it though...

You're making no sense at all.

Thanks for the feedback, but we are not touching Rifles in the short term. Our data and forums are in agreement that rifles have never been as balanced as they are currently. If that changes, we will come to the forums for feedback. Right now, there are many things we want to tweak and fix that have higher priority.

Ok...rail rifles. Again.

This is a tough discussion and I admittedly come at it from pretty dedicated RR user perspective. I am, however, interested everyone enjoying a balanced game.

Let's a take a quick look at the RR from the perspective of someone that uses it or the assault variant fairly exclusively.

1) Lowest DPS of racial rifles. That's pretty legit when compared to the range...no major issues with that. That said, with the DPS at this point it's pretty close to not being useful at longer rangers as its very easy to duck out of the way or get behind cover before taking terminal damage.

2) Charge time. This is oft argued back and forth with little positive headway. Many say the charge time is so negligible that it doesn't matter, people flutter the trigger, or pre-fire takes care of everything. My general response is that if it's such non-factor then remove it from the weapon or you could have a similar charge time penalty that you get on rail turrets when you "game" the spool time. I would also point out that this is the only major weapon drawback that doesn't have an SP sink or Racial Role bonus to offset it.

3) Hip fire vs ADS. One thing that hasn't been touched yet is the hip fire; this might help quite a bit if the hip fire was toned done noticeable. You can just about weave between shots with the low RoF and a cut in hip fire accuracy might be just the thing in order.

4) Mag size and reload time. These really are secondary factors but not something to overlook either. Lowest reload time and mag capacity for racial LW but you can offset these combat efficiency gaps with the weapons skill SP sinks. Again...shortcoming that can be mitigated with SP which is a basic positive theme.

5) Comparison to Laser Rifle. The Laser Rifle isn't counted as a basic racial rifle as far as I can tell so the direct comparisons may be a bit off. The similar range profiles is what generally draw the comparisons and conceptually the increasing damage overtime with a laser works very well. I would also concur with one of the earlier posters that "you can melt heavies" as I've witnessed some good LR users do just that. There is no real logical way to adjust a kinetic penetrator's damage profile to having less impact closer than it does at longer range and frankly there are other things to tweak outside of that.

6) Caldari Weapons kit bag. This kinda goes at the heart of it to me...if you make the RR too niche (and my opinion is that it can very easily drift that way) is that you leave a racial line without any kind of general purpose weapon. The short answer its that it doesn't make sense to do that without some built in off-set. Lot's of folks rightly point out that the Cal method relies on dealing damage at range...no issue with that; the thing people forget is to take an objective in game or conceptually from a lore stand point you still have to close the tactical gap and you shouldn't be too gimped. A CalLogi actually trying to run a support set up you can quickly be at a level of disadvantage that is a bit much.

My proposal to that is to actually make the ARR (or perhaps the MagSec) the viable option in mid-range combat and keep relevance in shorter combat ranges. For the ARR noticably cut the range down, keep RoF, and consider cutting the charge time a bit. I recommend changing the Operation skill to reducing the spool time and dropping the recoil reduction.

your graph does not account for weapon drawbacks. for example the scr overheats and the ar doesnt. this means that DPS over 10 seconds will be vastly different. The tactical Scrambler rifle is a high alpha burst weapon capable of heavy accurate fire for 2-3 seconds before it overheats, causing a significant movement penalty and locking. This means that nerfing it's DPS is unviable as it is only a "paper" figure. The gun can not be fired at maximum DPS unless you tap fast enough, a feat in itself. Therefore the graph does not accurately represent the scrambler rifle.

LOL

"You can burst and kill them, crippling yourself and god forbid they are armour tanking"
is someone forgetting the 20% reduction to armour? Oh yes, lets see... melt shields, die on armour, hmmm

"You can maintain the overheat"
Right, because it's not like they're shooting at us ... RiiiIIiight? I'll just do 58 dmg per shot to armour, at a slower rate than a rail rifle, until they die eventually, who cares about me? i'm invincible.

Please think game not paper

Monkey...a few points:

1) I believe the reload time on the Rail Rifle is the longest of any light weapon...you say it's already "short".

2) The Cal Assault bonus again has nothing to do with charge time so I'm confused at why you bring it up in that context.

3) The graphs - Tthere is no such thing as a "Breach" Rail Rifle; took me a minute to cypher through that and I'm really not seeing where you got the DPS value for the RR on the first graph (or perhaps I'm just having difficult time reading it). It also appears to me that your graph may not be accounting for the DPS degradation from the charge mechanic.

Sorry, MAC...you're losing me with your formula.

The reality is that it just doesn't play out that way in live play.

1) You can't take the weapons at their min / max, i.e. only in the hands of assaults, to get the full picture.

2) There is no clear exchange of DPS loss from Charge to Reload. Reload speed even on a max skilled and proto Cal Assault isn't "zero".

I would be more than happy to squad up and talk through my thoughts on this and I would be interested in hearing you describe your rubric.

Although this is pretty much closed to balance(as per rattati) you still only put a DPS/range model up there. You didn't take into account dispersion, accuracy of each weapon ect. To be honest your evaluation of rifles is limited at best.

The combat rifle(even though the values posted in game state otherwise) can out DPS most other rifles. I have, on numerous occasions, been fighting people sporting combat rifles, while I have switched tactics, using rail rifles or assault, they repeatedly whittle me down....

Regarding the rifles, I think

Assault rifle - close range shredding in gallente style. High ROF in line with assault weapons
Combat rifle - short range burst spraying shards of metal like a Minmatar gun should. Low damage handled by a high ROF balancing it for burst combat.
Scrambler rifle - mid range tactical rifle breaks down enemy shields rapidly as expected of a Minmatar gun. High damage managed by low ROF let's this gun pierce through a lined up target.
Rail rifle - long range breach rifle for caldari hit and run assault. The low ROF on this rifle compared with the high range and damage make this rifle excel as a breach weapon, piercing to and through armor while outdistancing the other rifles.

Here the 4 races, 4 rifles, 4 damage types, and 4 attack types all seem to me to fall into place in a very balanced and somewhat niche way(that's good!)

Instead I would query the pistols(Minmatar pistol is a joke), the classes(still lacking a light class...) Overall weapons parity(Amarr grenades?) Or full racial parity(vehicles... Like Minmatar ones... And MTACs) surely there is good work in all these areas to be done or how about restoring previous vehicles? Crying rifles for hotfix charlie when they've had so much work done and so much else needs so much work is just being a baby. I'm sorry you got hit with a rail rifle; get behind cover.

Quote stuff:

But you see then are a few things are no lomger taken into account.
1) Damage Profile - if each race only has 1 range what difference does damage profile do other than to marganilse specific weapons? My choice of damage profile should effect my chances as much as my range does.

They don't and shouldn'teach have one range. Differing weapons should and do have different range classes ie the bolt pistol has way way closer effective range than the sniper rifle, and it should although theyre both rail gun and long range for their weapon class. And as far as confining people to ranges by race look at shotgun>mass driver>laser rifle>sniper rifle and those ranges are completely forced with those weapons... Yet it isn't a problem. Outside the shotguns range the ion pistol is powerful moving into the assault rifle range through burst qnd tactical up to breach ar, and for ranges beyond that, there is plasma cannon. Remotes flaylock smg hmg combat rifle mass driver. Assault scrambler pistol, scrambler pistol, burst scrambler pistol, breach scrambler pistol, assault scrambler rifle, scrambler rifle, laser rifle. Bolt pistol magsec swarm launcher rail rifle forge gun sniper rifle... At which ranges exactly does a race not have a damage type represented? However gallente should eat caldari at close range amd gallente should get picked off easier from a distance and pairing shotgun vs bolt pistol or plasma cannon vs sniper rifle reveals this to be true and working well

2) Racial Range Variety - It's all well amd good saying all RR's should have long range, but there are more chareristics that are more important to the rifle, you need to allow each race to have a good variety, otherwise people just won't use specific weapons.
You may be right but thats not even a problem. Sure I don't use a rail rifle more than I use a breach assault rifle, but plenty of others do and they tear up shotgunner from afar or get eaten up by them up close as it should be. I think its too effective at close range, but when I use it I see it handles very poorly up close and when I think to cry about it I button my lip instead and just play