When do penalties to automatic fire apply?

The Muzzle Break barrel attachment says that it increases stability by 25% but reduces accuracy by 30% for automatic fire.

Does this apply when I burst fire in automatic mode or do I have to switch to burst/single to get the benefits?

Also, am I right in thinking that the accuracy attribute defines the amount of random variation in bullet direction that are otherwise beyond our control? i.e. if you aim at a spot and even if your gun didn’t recoil/climb/etc. at all bullets would still have a chance to miss that spot if they had a low accuracy?

Actually, is there a good guide to all the attachments - detailing exactly what they do and why you’d want to use them? i.e. Muzzle Breaks are best on DMR’s (are they?!), etc.

EDIT: Does 1% reduction in accuracy correspond to a 1% reduction in stability - or are they at different scales?

Symthic.com has great guides for weapons and attachments.

Symthic is amazing! Can’t recommend it enough. I wish symthic type stats were built into the game

Symthic.com will explain it all much better, the in game terms of “accuracy” and “stability” are too vague, symthic breaks it down into spread, directional recoil, suppression, moving vs. standing, muzzle velocity, bullet drop, ect. You really need to check it out.

I completely forgot about Symthic.com, thanks for the reminder!

EDIT: Wow, symthic.com has really come along massively since I was last there. Amazing.

It really needs a Tl dr