While playing Mass Effect 3, I noticed that the various firearm statistics sliders are all the same length, but unlike powers, there are no units listed.
That means that you can only compare your weapons to some theoretical "optimum" value, as shown below.
But, when you find a second weapon of the same type, you can compare the two of them. (The interface even gives you a helpful guide line so that you can see whether the quality will increase or decrease.)
But what about when you want to compare two weapons of different types?
Does this really mean that my heavy pistol is as accurate as a sniper rifle? Or, for that matter, if my submachine gun and my pistol are the same weight, can I swap them without changing my cooldown penalty? Or are cross-category weapon comparisons meaningless?
Best Answer
Yes those bars are equal for different weapon classes. So if you find the same weight assault rifle as your pistol you can switch between both of them and should maintain the same recharge penalty.
The only time this is different for weights across different classes is in multiplayer, because you can choose to add skill points to make all "one weapon class" 30% or 25% lighter.
But for all the other bars, they come across as the same even if it is a shotgun compared to a pistol.