Might be, I will happily discuss the Bandit more in depth when I have used it a lot more, right now I have very limited experience with it. I own it but haven't really used it much since I am working on the ACX11.
The Tross is one of only two ARs in the game with a 200 damage profile (an NC exclusive), sure it overlaps with the Reaper, but that's because the NC basically already have the most diverse AR lineup already. The Bandit differs markedly from the Mercenary, it has CQC carbine TTK and 3 tier damage drop, CQC carbine attachments and gets 0.75x ADS on a high DPS weapon with only 0.200 horizontal recoil, this is a very unique gun. The Zenith and Terminus are both simply standard 30x143 weapons with middling rate of fires, like 90% of VS ARs and Carbines. If anything, it is a sad indictment of the state of the VS AR & Carbine line up, that a new 143x30 carbine and AR is considered "fun" and "unique". Oh, by the way the Zenith is a carbine version of the NC Carnage AR, that the NC have had since release.
Bandit: 3 headshot kill, rate of fire: 632, takes 0.29 seconds NS-11C: 4 headshot kill, rate of fire: 652, takes 0.37 seconds Nuff said.
That's a pretty bad conclusion. More rounds in the magazine are worth quite a bit more than a better long reload on a weapon that should never reach its long reload anyway. If you're hitting long reloads on a 167/550 you're messing up somewhere along the line. That aside, it's a stupid conclusion to say "this weapon that reloads 30 rounds does so faster than this weapon that reloads 35!" Reload efficiency is important. 30 rounds over 1.66s is about 18 rounds reloaded per second. 35 rounds over 2.015s is about 17.4 rounds reloaded per second. Effectively equivalent. The Razor definitely has a significant long reload edge, but long reloads should not be happening with either of these guns (and if they are, the Razor is going to be experiencing more of them). 5 extra rounds is almost another kill per magazine, and the short reload is just as good and easier to hit because of those extra rounds. Everything else is basically identical. Cougar is better if you're not hitting long reloads, and you shouldn't be.
My point with the reload time comparison was that effectively, Cougar doesn't have 5 more rounds in the magazine. You're correct that you should never reach the long reload on a long range carbine - but bear with me while I use this fact to prove a point. If you want to always avoid the long reload, by definition, it means you have to have at least 1 round in the magazine. However, you're not going to able to control every single reload to such accuracy - you're much more likely to leave at least 2-5 rounds in the magazine, often more, just so you don't have to constantly keep an eye on how many you have left. And this isn't counting the instances where you reload a near full magazine just because there's nothing going on. Thus, we're typically left with 30-33 rounds in the Cougar mag, often even less than 30, as we proceed to our short reload. Now ask yourself: how much of an advantage do those 5 extra rounds give your Cougar when the Razor could simply spend all 30 rounds every single time, never worry about how many there are left in the mag, and still spend less time reloading? I don't even have to talk about Razor's 1.66 second short reload to prove that the difference in magazine size is irrelevant between the two weapons.
Questionable logic, questionable conclusion. It's true you won't always get all 35 rounds out of the Cougar, but you will usually get more than 30, and that's an advantage (particularly so with higher-damage bullets, we're not talking 125 or 143 here). And if you get the short reload on the Cougar but the long on the Razor, the Cougar is actually more efficient on a rounds-per-second basis (the reload is 0.015s slower than the Razor long, but reloads 5 additional rounds). The 5 extra rounds are also significantly more useful in situations where you're in a panic, or in a 1v2, or at a long enough distance that long reloading is safe and need to squeeze out as much damage per magazine as possible lest an enemy reach cover or tank your shots with Resist Shield or something. Good play can maintain the Cougar's reload parity with the Razor, but no amount of good play can put 5 more rounds in the Razor's magazine. At best you have to hope you're in a situation where you're capable of reloading an empty primary instead of pulling a pistol such that the 2s long reload is able to give you 30 fresh rounds, but 2s is a long time in hipfire conditions so I wouldn't count the mere possibility of pulling it off in insanely rare circumstances as an edge for the Razor over the Cougar always having those 5 additional rounds ready to go if you need them.
It reloads four additional rounds, usually fewer. And since 0.015s is just a bit longer than one round fired at 550 RPM, it reloads only three additional rounds per time spent reloading - again, usually fewer. Anecdotal. In all of those situations - panic, 1v2, long distance - there are arguments in favor of having faster short reload as well. I think you're smart enough to think some such anecdotal arguments yourself so I'll leave it at that. Four more rounds, not five. Usually fewer. Equally, no amount of good play can make 1/3 of a second of reload time simply vanish. Why rely on a 2s long reload to give you 30 fresh rounds, when you could rely on a 1.66s short reload to give you 25-29? In addition, while Cougar has the advantage of always having those 5 additional rounds, Razor has the advantage of replenishing the magazine faster than the Cougar can fire five rounds (5 rounds = 0.545s, difference in long reload = 0.845s). Obviously, the exact situations where the extra rounds come in handy are different from where reload speed comes in handy, but overall, they cancel each other out.
Now you're just being disingenuous and silly. Anecdotal arguments absolutely matter when discussing field performance. If you approach guns on their theoretical output you get stupid outcomes, like thinking the Razor's reload is more important than five extra rounds (or 1-4 if you wish to be pedantic, since you're ignoring the probability that the Razor is wasting rounds too). All of these anecdotal situations are common enough occurrences that you need to be planning for them in normal gameplay. You will be in hipfire range with people. You will occasionally have to shoot at multiple people at the same time. You will be firing over distance where stopping someone from getting into cover can be a 1-4 bullet deal and 1.66s can be just enough time for them to get there. Good play allows you to not be constantly bumbling into enemies or getting jumped while reloading, in which case the difference is literally irrelevant unless the reload speed difference is astronomical. It's something that matters with LMGs, not with carbines. The extra magazine advantage, however, is useful both when playing well and when encountering situations that force you to adapt to disadvantageous circumstances. And as I noted, the short reloads are equally efficient, so the advantage exists only in situations where you just need a handful of bullets and have exactly 0.34s to put them out, or where the Cougar is actually running completely empty. I can tell you that whenever the Cougar has run empty for me it's because I was expending the magazine to kill a target, and those 5 rounds probably are what helped me walk away from that. And given that my opponent was dead, I had lots of time to cycle that longer reload. Because you're magdumping in hipfire and are equally dead in 1.66s or 2s? Even then, sure, the short is better if you can get it, but you're gambling a lot leaving one round in the chamber just to get that .34s advantage when that one bullet might've ended the fight right there. That's just not playing smart. In either case you're generally better off pulling your pistol, but the Cougar prevents you from pulling that pistol for another 5 rounds out of your higher-damage-output primary. Not really, because that's not how real combat situations tend to unfold in this game. You pretty much never mechanically unload the entire magazine minus one round at maximum ROF, reload, and begin firing again immediately, so this theoretical advantage the Razor has almost never materializes in actual events. You tend to either reload out of necessity, or because of a break in combat (lost a target, killed a target, hiding to regenerate health/shields). Wasn't this thread supposed to be about the Bandit?
