Heavy Rifle ammo is 12 shots per ton.
Gauss ammo is 26 shots per ton.
True, but the Gauss is 15 tons. Gauss + 26 shots = 16 tons. Heavy Rifle + 36 shots + 5 heatsinks = 16 tons, with more outright damage potential.
The Gauss Rifle is 5 times the cost, the weapon itself can explode if critted making it a bit less likely to survive a rough mission than the Heavy Rifle.
The strongest case for the Gauss centers on the low heat generation, minimal if any ballistic arc and excellent shot velocity, which are definitely strong selling points for it as a sniper tool.
They're both rather slow-firing, the Gauss is faster on a followup by a bit but with longer-ranged pinpoint frontload followups can be considered a lesser concern as it might indicate you're under-utilizing a precision weapon.
Overall the Gauss is actually the better weapon in its role but better enough to warrant this state of weapon balance when compared against (of all things) a Primitive-tech weapon? I dunno, I really don't understand why we're dusting off Primitive tech to fill the gaps here when there was already a massive amount of extant variance in Autocannon behavior canonically and thus opportunity to explore different weapon characteristics via sidegrading ACs and such with different manufacturers, specs, etc. If we're just kind of crapping on lore here why not just bring in some of the Civil War tech like Light ACs? Why not give ACs specialty ammo like Precision etc.? Just feels like PGI, in their laziness, ended up taking a far more circuitous route than necessary.
I'm giving the ammo info cos readers don't know and need to take it into consideration.
You don't bring 1 ton of ammo, I bring 8.5 tons of H.rifle now, legs and head only hold 5 ammo slots, being ammo inefficient increases the risk of ammo explosion as you bring more and you may have other weapons ammo.
Gauss gun explodes but the ammo doesn't, I can slot the gauss ammo in unsafe areas letting other weapon ammo take the safer slots.
Both guns have explosion risks, you also have it evaluate it against other guns, going AC may be the safer route than H.rifle.
Rarity and replaceability is the bigger issue. Gauss is lostech, you get it from loot, Cantina missions or late game market, H. Rifle from black market but top tier ones you get from Cantina missions as well.
It is easier to get 4 tier gauss rifles late game from market than to get H.rifle from blackmarket, but slightly easier to get 5 tier H.Rifle from Cantina. Either way losing either 5 tier ones will hurt and it is not the cost but replacing them with Cantina missions or finding them in the market.
The 5 tier gauss rifle ROF isn't faster by a bit, it is 47% faster, it is 66% faster at 1 tier.
H. Rifle is 11% higher dam at 5 tier but 20% higher dam at 1 tier.
H. Rifle heat is 55% of damage at 1 tier, it is hotter than a medium laser.
I've used the lower tier H.rifle, it isn't that good going high tier fixes some of the issues.
I'm not surprised PGI went this route, their MO for peddling new things in MWO was typically to roll out overpowered shit that came dangerously close to P2W, game balance for balance's sake was not really a consideration - it was just another carrot/stick to chase players into buying stuff. It's funny to see it being translated to a single-player game DLC, I'll admit. It's also pretty funny that they decided to use things like Rifles for this. Not sure anyone expected them to try to dust off/reinvent Primitive tech as a new hotness.
You were saying Heavy Rifle is OP shit that came dangerously close to P2W, I am disagreeing with this, it is good but it has drawbacks, which is very apparent if you play the game and use the lower tier ones.
I admit I have exagerated my story ( for the sake of science, mind you
). But the point still stands. I know the quirks and the tiers benefit everything, but in case of the Gauss this means overkill range and velocity, you
very rarely get to shoot at targets so far away. While the heavy rifle, (which maybe you forgot but should be a sub-par 'primitive' weapon, only used against 'mechs in the direst of circumstances) gets a much larger effective increase in rate and damage. I'm not saying it's better than a Gauss but it's half its weight, slottable in a medium and does
more damage on an alpha strike which, 75% of times, is all you need to strike down a target, making its slow reload moot.
You have a point in saying that the increase in stat is linear across the board but
they (those I call newb) also have a point. PGI took a random piece of outdated tech and turned it into something that can
stand against one of the most powerful weapon in the game. If heavy rifles weren't outperforming Gauss for the general public, they wouldn't be as popular as they are, am I wrong?
I'm the one who told you that the heavy rifle is good, you don't have to tell me the good points.
I'm pointing out the drawbacks of the heavy rifle because people are saying it is "overpowered shit that came dangerously close to P2W", they didn't even use it, just basing on what you say and you didn't mention the weaknesses.
Gauss and H. Rifle have the same range, I constantly fight at long ranges.
The lead time is noticeable for Heavy Rifle but it is still easy to hit, it is easier to headshot with gauss.
Alpha strike doesn't kill in one shot 75% of the time, unless you are only talking about using 4 H.rifles, small mechs or shooting them in the head or back, I could be using 1 to 3 heavy rifles, aiming to salvage, remove high threat weapons first, fast moving targets, more than 1 target all these make ROF important.
This is what I actually experience while running the 3 H.Rifle mech, while running the lower tier H. rifles with other mechs I'm rarely going to 1 shot anything. Try using a normal rifleman with 2 2-tier heavy rifles or a vulcan with 1, not munchkin mechs, the 3 heavy rifle Cataphract mech requires a Hero mech and can barely fit anything else in.
The biggest issue with Gauss is it is large slot, I can't mount 3 of them and blast mechs away but I can mount 3 or 4 heavy rifles.
They run into my fire, etc. Also the Xcom map thing is not very well done either. It's again the cheapest and weakest option. A much better alternative being something like Space Rangers 2. I think given how weak this game is they should have cut half the features and just focused on the absolute basics, even that I'm not sure they could have done well. 
