This is a bit of an eye opener and thanks for sharing.

However, it still looks like a crucial element is missing, how rifles are being used in game. In my humble opinion, there is no reason for all ten rifles to be getting equal amounts of kills per spawn.

Do you take into conideration for example usage and design philosophy first and see if the gun is overperforming or tweak the numbers to follow design philosphy afterwards?

Using the Rail Rifle: Design to be a long range in line with caldari lore. Is there data to show that wow, the RR is getting alot of close range kills this is unusual for a longe range weapon? Or rather the RR is getting alot of kills everywhere lets nerf the CQC because its long range weapon?

Before any proposal i'm sure you do need the stats to back you up. I'm curious as too what stats unrelated to kills are taken into consideration, also other factors such as ease of use, fitting costs, market purchases, damage output etc. By this reasoning its easy to see why shotguns remain untouched, a scout might one shot a medium frameor two/ three shot a heavy and get killed right afterwards by another scout, it might look just fine according to these metrics bu IMO unbalanced in terms of gameplay.

Da fun it isn't it has the same abilities as all the other long range rifle lr performs the same role as rr tar and cr how is it not a rifle it has rifle in its name lol i don't see why ccp doesn't track it the lr is way more deadly than scr

What defines general use ..how is rr a general use weapon but lr not..they cover the same range profiles and both kill efficiently

The term general use can't refer to popular or sniper would be general use and lr not ..but in raw killing potential the lr equals every other rifle it's range profile equates to the rr ..it's viable in ar ranges but harder to use

I don't see how laser rifle us not a general use rifle

So explain to me how is lr not a general use rifle

There seems to be a massive misunderstanding about what a suppression weapon is.

There is no universe where a suppression weapon is not a killing weapon, or ineffective at doing so.

The modern machinegun is amazingly tooled and optimized for killing. It is a suppression weapon.

Suppression weapons are weapons designed to vomit out a continuous trail of death that presents an enemy with only two options: Hide or Die. Binary choice, no exceptions unless the suppression weapon operator is doing it wrong.

Laser rifle outranges most weapons in the game and at long range is amazingly effective at getting across this message.

If you don't dive for cover I'm melting your face off faster than the gumby with the assault rifle 20 yards away.

Suppression weapons combine two traits:

1: range, because if the enemy is close he can overrun you. keep him at range.

2: Obnoxious killing power if you stand in the way.

What they've been trying to achieve is having variants that mimic the racial base. For instance, the Tac AR mimics the ScR (base tactical). The ARR mimics the AR (base assault). The Breach CR will mimic the RR (base breach). The issue is, the ARR does not properly mimic the AR, and while it's gotten much better than it was with the damage and magazine size buff, is still too similar to the base RR in terms of hipfire kick and range. It should be more like the AR; far less kick, reduced range. In this way, it not only gives people with SP in RR a CQC option, similar to how the Tac AR gives people with SP in ARs a long range option, but it also makes the ARR distinguished from the base RR as the Tac AR is distinguished from the AR. As it stands, both RR and ARR are horrible for CQC, both have nearly identical ranges. This should not be. Imagine the Tac AR had only 3m more range than the base AR.

The ARR should not be as good as, say, the ACR or the AR on that 0-Xm CQC engagement range, but neither should it be just as bad as the RR at that same range. Otherwise, what's the point of having it at all? If it functions just as bad in CQC, what does it bring to the table that makes it unique from the RR? ARR should be the Caldari close range rifle, just as the AR is the Gallente close range rifle, just as the AScR is the Amarr close range rifle, just as the ACR is the Minmatar close range rifle.

Let me clarify some things about my opinions.

When the RR received the 4x increase to hipfire kick, the ARR also received a 4x increase to hipfire kick. This is what my issue is. If this was an accident I'd like it fixed posthaste. If it was intentional, I'd like to know why so I can understand the reasoning better and can formulate a proper opinion on it.