-The C rating on a battery will tell you how many amps the battery will put out under load. You take the amperage of the battery, and multiply this by the C number. The number you get, will tell you how many amps the battery can continuously put out.
example : 5000mAh 20c battery. 5000 mAh = 5amps x 20 = 100 amps
example 2 : 3800mAh 35c battery. 3800mAh = 3.8amps x 35 = 133 amps
-There are good a bad packs. Usually based on either the maker of the lipo cells in the packs or the brand of lipo you purchase. Orion, SMC, Thunder Power, Trinity, and MaxAmps are all good brands.
-Hard Case battery's are like the name says. Cased. This is a good thing! Lipos when damaged can fail. Hard cased ones are much more durable and are required for ROAR racing.
- You do not need to discharge a lipo. Ever. Just charge it, run it, charge it again. Run it. Over and over. You just cannot run the battery lower than 6v or thy will fail. And cant put them past 8.4v or they will fail. Usually people have cutoffs around 6.5-7v as a safety factor so they don't come close to hurting them.
-Yes you can recharge them right after running. As lipos dont get warm when you use them(Unless you're using a battery that cant supply the power your motor needs)
-Balancing makes sure that the individual cells inside the pack are at the same voltage. Higher quality packs don't need this as often but its ALWAYS a good idea to balance charge them. The reason is, as time goes on. the voltage of the cells differ. And because the charger only sees the total voltage, you can run into problems. Because if one cell in the pack gets charged to 4.5 and one is at 3.9. Your charger will see 8.4 which is good. Except at 4.5(limit is 4.2 per cell) your pack will be toast. Its also true when running the batteries. Even if the pack reads out 6.5(well within safety limits). If one cell is reading 2.6 and the other is 3.9. 2.6 is under the 3v limit and your battery will be dead. So really, you should always balance them. As balancing them makes sure that both cells are always at the same voltage.
Hope this all helps!
