Wasn't the actual ranges:
Heavy Carronade: 425m and
Gatling: 450m?
Light Carronade was something around 325m, I think, just for comparing purposes.
I mean, of course you can use greased Gatling, but if you see that Carronade at max range, I dunno.
And then again 425m are not little, not always do you get presented with the possibility of staying at that range and grounding out the enemy.
And then more so again, you would think a heavy gun is able to beat a light gun.
And even more so, a lesmok Gatling actually isn't that bad against a Goldfish. I mean, the Goldfish's armor health is like 400 only and the Carronade can't kill as quick as a lesmok Gatling and light Flak/Banshee combination, if it stays in range.
If the range of the Carronade gets lowered, then the light Carronade might very likely be lowered too and that might decrease it's usefulness on a number of ships, which changes balance and on and on...
I don't really see a problem with the range on the gun itself. Maybe "Close Range" is not close range enough and the gap needs to be bigger, but that in itself should be discussed in another thread.
Back to the topic though, I do believe Heavy Clip on the Heavy Carronade is all you ever really need, since it has the same dps as default rounds, which is not that bad, and you are always able to snipe components with that 1 shot left, if you have to. Sniping heavy guns with any Carronade is, naturally, especially easy.
Of course that does not rule out other ammo types that give you an extra disruption effect or better dps.
Depending on what you want the gun to focus on, heavy clip is the better ammo type or not. Similar to a normal Gatling, you could outrange and "out-accurate" any other non heavy clip Gatling at range. But in close range everybody wants the greased rounds for pure dps on the enemy armor, similar one could choose the charged rounds for the Heavy Carronade and just get close enough to have the best dps and instead of using it as a disable gun, use it as a killing gun, while disabling the balloon of course.
In my opinion, the heavy clip does exactly what it should do and is fine where it is.