Example:
Classify cartridges by their energy and attribute damage to that energy. Most small arms fall under a few kinetic energy ranges but their effect on non-armored targets are mostly similar, see source.
Apologies for the garbage damage numbers, I still have no idea what would be “good” for them.
Recoil and dispersion would have to be reworked for this suggestion to get off the ground. Recoil would have to be more severe, aiming would have to take longer, holding your breath would almost have to be mandatory for long distance shots, more muzzle flash… I guess you would also have to take into account weapons that have flash hiders or compensators…
Bah, lemme know if I was going anywhere with this.
You are right that this would make the game more realistic and simply many things.
The only problem is that damage is considered a prime balancing tool in this game, semi-auto rifles and select-fire rifles purposefully have lower damage than bolt-action despite usually being exact same rifle round.
What we will never see is high damage MGs, even though they fire full power rifle rounds, they don’t have the punch of BA rifles so they don’t kill soldiers with one hit.
Theres rather obvious reason why guns have different damages regarding balance.
This is one way to balance things, but for some odd reason I feel like people wouldnt consider this game very appealing if they had recoil similar to CS AK47.
After all majority of time your just slaughtering bots.
Personally I’d like some ammount of damage “standardization”.
Like the 0.2 more damage of MP40 that drives me nuts.
Also personally I’d like to give a short range damage buff for pistol rounds. Just because they feel very weak per bullet.
But SMGs are already meta without extra help so I guess it’s not a great idea.