Otherway round, this is the orginal, although almost without exception the Disscusssions and Feedback variant has less conjecture and circumstantial evidence.

But if I didn't put it in both there would have been a serious mistake which was pointed out to me on this thread.
The thing is their are a few of us in GD who prefer to balance weapons with more than just the following arguments.

1. I used it and only did about average this clearly means it's not OP


2. I used it and absolutely slaughtered a selection of blueberries probably straight from the Academy, it's clearly OP


3. I think it FEELS too powerful, this clearly makes it OP


4. I think it FEELS just fine, obviously this means it's not OP


5. I've got a mate who only does reasonably with it, so how can it be OP?


6. I tried it once and liked it more than my current Protostomping fit, it is OP and must be nerfed to hell and back.

and so on and so forth.

This is the thing cruor, echo and every one else who says numbers don't mean squat. This ENTIRE game is built upon numbers. If numbers aren't important why are there so blasted many of them? No of course the game's not played in a vaccum.

But as has been said before. You cannot make an unbiased calculation of weapons balance on 2 people of different skill levels, you can say it's more difficult to hit/aim or whatever but so long as you can get rounds on target it must be assumed that someone somewhere will be able to get even more rounds on target.

You also can't account for Tank type either, since you can tank, either or both, you can't say it's balanced because it can't cut through such and such a tank, yet another weapon that does is suddenly OP, that's biased towards that tank type.

Cover is also a non-factor unless you are calculating regen on a dropsuit. Since in all but 3 (4 if you count the FG) cases, if you don't have line of sight to your opponent, which is required to apply damage, then neither do your opponent.

Reload times are only a factor if you are in an engagement which requires more than 1 magazine, since it's rather biased to balance a weapon assuming it's only ever got half it's mag at the beginning of the engagement.

So no the game is played in a vaccum where we are all standing in a large flat open field, standing still and shooting each other, but if you take a snapshot of an engagement, say the next time a heavy rounds a corner, that frozen moment of time, that's exactly what is happening.

The maths simply doesn't care, it only tells it like it is.