i am sorry but the issue is with BG's capable of ludicrous amount of dmg possible for the AP used. no other weapon can make such efficient use of AP in terms of ap:damage ratio. nothing wrong with BG firing 3 times, or 50 times, as long as there is a more acceptable accuracy. minigun fires what 30? 40? rounds? what do you think is possibility of someone using a big gun like that and hitting all 40 bullets, let alone even half?
in real life, a trained persons accuracy with a small machine gun (assault rifle size) is around ~30% per clip. that is only average of course, and just used as an example here. this is fallout obviously and if you are only hitting 30% of shots you will not be having fun.
what needs to be achieved is balance between single, aimed, critical shot and massive spray and pray burst spam. currently if you have enough skill with BG, you are nearly perfectly accurate, scoring burst 100+ from very far away.
in my opinion, bg's accuracy scale should be:
0-100 skill: 20-50% accuracy
101-251 skill: 40-70% accuracy
251-300 skill: 70-95% accuracy
if some scaling accuracy formula was applied to bg hit %, i believe we would see a much greater balance than could be achieved with simply nerfing AP cost of BG burst.
not only would a scaling formula more accurately portray a fight situation (small guns/ew need a tweak as well, in this case), but this will give purpose to builds with high gun skill... as in, a BG character must be dedicated to BG and BG only to be as powerful as they are now. currently, the situation stands that a BG's only weakness is arm crits. a proper BG build toon will be able to doctor broken arms in the middle of combat (RT) or survive long enough to escape. such a situation, in my opinion of course, is unacceptable in any MMORPG, because of obvious reasons. one player build should not have complete dominance over any other, even in solo situation.
that is not always possible, however, so i really look forward to see what changes solar and other devs bring to the table for the next wipe.