My reasoning behind this is there a couple of issue that popped up that would have been noticed much sooner. The Sight bonus missing on Path Finders for instance. It's possible that I'm wrong.
I don't think thats important as long as the stuff gets fixed without another patchgate happening out of blue.
Nice suggestion. As Katitof implied, I think the delayed fire would take too long. Maybe the delay between salvos is nice and someone said a percentage reduction in munitions while it's active like 10% for being permanently active until disabled.
Ost counterbarrage works exactly the same way, it doesn't have any kind of cost for it.