Thanks for the info Gian. There is no room in my game for two different kind of amours though... That would be neat for a more tactical game with focus on military/police units (as stated I have zombies and robots as well to deal with and many other gameplay systems the player has to deal with).

The reason why revolvers have so good armour penetration is somewhat gamey. I need something low-range, that are not to good in general (such as AR will be in my game) to fill that role. Also, this is almost a gaming standard, just look at the revolver in halflive/halflife 2 (they even overdid it in that game but it DID work for that gameworld).

What about fire being very armour penetrative? Seems logical right?

Hmm.... why not go with PDWs (Pistols / Submachine guns rechambered for AR Ammunition) if you want short ranged weapons with good armour piercing characteristics? To elevate these over AR levels, you could give them special armour piercing ammunition (usually it is something like tungsten core ammunition where a harder inner core is coated with a softer, normal material for the bullet).

Of course I noticed many games somehow trying to make revolvers something special, when all that is special about revolvers being 1) the ammunition can have an arbitrary size as you do not need to fit the magazine into the grip of the pistol (thus why you find many magnum revolvers, but less semi-automatic pistols using the same caliber), and 2) the whole mechanism being less complex and thus most probably also more rugged (which to my knowledge is the only reason why many police forces still use revolvers to this day).

The only game that seemed to have a more "real to life" difference between revolvers and semi-auto pistols was borderlands, where you could fire revolvers "as fast as you can pull the trigger" while semi-automatic pistols had a fixed reload delay... of course only until the drum was empty, and even then most pistols reload delay was about as fast as any non-korean player could pull the trigger ... still interesting difference, that is actually how double action revolvers work, and theoretically having a drum of chambers versus a single chamber would increase your possible rate of fire (seeing how fast reallife machine pistols fire and that revolvers are limited to the rounds loaded to the drum, as well as issues with recoil and aiming between shots, this doesn't really matter much).

Of course, as soon as you leave real weapons, you could design more extreme revolvers. Your revolver needs to solve several problems before firing especially strong ammunition, part of that had to be solved for magnum revolvers (sealing of the chamber to prevent injury to the users hands, thickened chamber walls which makes the whole drum quite big and heavy)... there is a less known revolver by an italian manufacturer Mateba that tried to solve the problem of the quite high barrel on normal revolvers (making recoil worse than with semi automatic guns because of larger vertical movement) by making the revolver firing from the lowest chamber in the drum and accordingly moving the barrel lower... might help a revolver fire a more powerful round without the vertical movement you see with most people firing a magnum revolver.

On the reality of a flame thrower getting around armour: absolutely!

Actually, wearing armour could make things WORSE for the wearer as the armour, if made up of metals, could be a pretty good heat conducter, thus frying the skin of the wearer even more than without (okay, wearing clothing that catches fire is actually worse, but most military clothing of today os non inflammable... we had many good laughs burning holes into old military clothing we wore during service. We wouldn't have laughed as loud if the piece of clothing would have caught fire (or the officers finding out ). As soon as the heat source was shut off, the clothing cooled down quickly without catching fire).

One of the best (and most probably most feared by the crews) ways to defeat a tank was to hit it with a flame thrower. Would make the crew bail out immidiatly. Bad enough that ammunition or fual might have ignited, temparatures in the already hot tank would rise quickly.

The only way to defeat fire is a fireproof material and additional cooling of whoever sits within the fireproof material. Not really what normal armour does, no matter if vehicle or body armour.

In real-world terms, penetrative force of a projectile is a function of the amount of energy it's carrying at the time of impact, combined with it's diameter, shape, and deformation properties. Energy is given as the mass of the projectile times velocity-squared. Common hand-gun cartridges typically produce low-to-mid-range velocities on medium-to-heavy-weight projectiles that are relatively blunt; common rifle cartridges typically produce high-to-very-high velocities on light-to-medium-weight projectiles that are usually more pointed; common shotgun ammunition produce low velocities and includes slugs or large shot ("buckshot") -- either a single very-heavy blunt projectile, or a handful of medium-weight round projectiles -- small shot ("birdshot") would be unpleasant to experience for sure, and could be lethal at short ranges, but is not worth considering for combat purposes (no military or police force would issue birdshot, except for pest-control purposes).

Because the velocity term in the energy equation is squared you deliver more energy on target using lighter, faster-moving projectiles. Also, blunt projectiles made from soft metals like lead dump a lot of energy as they deform on impact. More pointed projectiles will more-easily puncture hard armor because the energy is (at least initially) concentrated at the point, as will those made from hard metals (hardened steel or tungston) because they do not deform and so do not lose energy. There are also projectiles made entirely from, or including 'penetrator' elements made from, mild-steel which gives better penetration than soft lead but which is not "armor piercing" in the sense of defeating hard armors (including that worn on the body), but do better-defeat soft armors and barriers like wood or drywall.

I would put straight-walled (a good indicator of relative mass/velocity of projectile, for physics reasons) pistol-caliber cartridges less than 9mm in the low penetration camp regardless of what kind of firearm they're fired from (its true that a longer barrel will allow a projectile to gain velocity over a shorter one, but not enough to make much difference with such categories as you have; you could give SMGs or pistol-caliber carbines a bump if you wanted). .45 auto here too -- its heavy but slow -- and doesn't have significantly more energy than a hot 9mm load.

I would put certain larger pistol calibers (10mm, .44 magnum, 357 magnum, .40s&w) in the medium-penetration camp.

I would put buckshot in the low-penetration camp at distances greater than about 15 yards, and in the high penetration camp at ranges less than 3 yards; medium penetration otherwise; effective range limited to 40-50 yards.

I would put slugs in the low-penetration campt at distances greater than 50 yards, and in the high penetration camp at ranges less than 10 yards; medium-penetration otherwise; effective range limited to 75 or 100 yards.

I would put rifles of .223 caliber or 7.62x39 in the medium penetration camp (to include similar hunting calibers like 30/30) to an effective range of 300 yards' anything larger in common military use (somewhere round-abouts 30-06, .308 (or its NATO designation 7.62x51)) in the high-penetration camp out an effective range of 800 yards -- though, I suppose all these effective ranges aren't much use in your top-down 2D game...

Grenades and explosive devices kill mostly by concussive force inside 3 yards, armor or not, you're dead if you're that close. Shrapnel is a factor outside that distance, very high penetration if you're hit, but the likelihood of being hit falls off drastically with distance (the likelihood can be reasonably estimated using the formula 1 / (2*pi*distance-squared) for ground detonations or 1 / (4pi*distance-squared) for detonations in the air or resting on a surface that the shrapnel will penetrate rather than ricochet from, these formulas assume uniform distribution of shrapnel).

Sounds pretty good to me....

good point about hot-loading, forgot about that. Yes, that is another way of improving muzzle velocity and thus penetrative force, paid with more recoil and lowered reliability of the weapon (and shorter barrel life, but that is certainly beyond the scope of the discussion).

To the OP, if you don't know what hotloading means: its squeezing more powder into the cartridge than what would be normally used. Most of the time done manually, which, if done improper, is quite risky. Also, you do need to know how much additional force your weapon can withstand, as you expose chamber and barrel to more pressure now than what it was intended to withstand (thus counting on the manufacturer to have produced the weapon with security margins in place).

One thing though:

While I am aware that Magnum pistol round do have a quite high potential energy because of their weight and length, are you sure they can keep up with AR Ammunition like the small NATO 5.6mm round or the larger AK47 round? Both are fired at much higher muzzle velocities than pistol Magnum rounds AFAIK, and both are pointed versus the Magnum ammos rounded design.

Can Magmum ammunition penetrate a military class Kevlar vest without the plates? I am asking because I really don't know, Magnum rounds are extremly rare in europe where pistols almost exclusively come in 9mm Parabellum.

Or did you mean "at optimum range", which would be quite close for magnum rounds, but farther away for AR rounds (especially the 5.6mm NATO round... I heard different values, some went as high as saying the round has the maximum penetrative force at 100m because the round is not stable in flight before that)?

I would guess a Magnum round to loose speed much faster because of the rounded design even though the larger weight should have the opposite effect.

Depends entirely upon the body armor.

I seriously suggest you research into the resistant abilities of organic and non organic materials.

But a brief summary is thus

I

Just straight up Kevlar and not a whole lot of it. Will stop .22lr and up to.380 but these are probably the most anemic rounds you can find on the market.

II

Stops most semi auto pistol rounds and everything bellow it, from 9mm to .45 acp. Does not stop .357 magnum, in a revolver, nor .357 SIG.

IIA

A new variant of the Level II armor which stops most, if not all semi automatic pistol rounds, 9mm, .40S&W and .45 acp including .357 but not .44 magnum when out of a revolver nor .357 SIG which is a semi auto cartridge, nor any armor piercing ammunition like 5.7. Does not stop any rifle rounds.

III

Most commonly known as AR500 plates which are hardened steel plates. Will protect the wearer against everything up to M80 7.62x51 NATO, but not AP rounds and some AP pistol rounds like 5.7. There are however, new types of rifle ammunition that are not AP and will defeat it. The new US standard ammunition, M885a1 defeats it while also being the same 5.56 caliber which is smaller than its max, the M80 round.

IIIA is like everything before it except the Level III armor, Kevlar. It stops all pistol rounds, including .357 mag and SIG, as well as .44 mag. It may stop basic pistol rounds like 5.56 and 7.62x39 but don't count on it to do so.

IV

Stops everything. AP ammo included. Up to .30-06 M2 AP which has a hardened steel penetrator. But doesn't stop magnum pistol rounds like .300 win mag, .338 lapua and .50 BMG.

From a game design point, there can be some merit to carrying revolver ammunition but from the same point, a player may just chose to carry a 9mm and do a greater amount of damage since they'd be able to carry more 9mm than .44 mag which is also very expensive and nowhere near as common, while having a lighter gun.

And really, if you want an accurate model of "damage" per say, it may be a good idea to look up the ballistics of each round and type you want. Especially when it penetrates flesh.

And even though a round may not damage someone if they're wearing armor, make no mistake, even something like 9mm can still fuck you up because the armor has to distribute the shock and energy of the round.

If you have more questions, ask away since I am very familiar with most if not all types of guns, their ballistics and the function of armor.

You could group them based on the distance they could shoot, for example short-ranged weapons doing low damage, middle ranged doing middle damage :) and so on. Not fully realistic but is simple.

I think in part the design of a revolver makes for good gameplay as much as anything -- you get a lot more punch, but naturally the trade-off is lower capacity between reloads.

But in real life, the larger rounds found in popular revolvers are usually high-pressure -- the design and function of a revolver is inherently better-suited to withstanding those forces because there's no springs, slides, or breach-locking mechanisms like a semi-auto pistol has. If you've ever seen an automatic pistol chambered in one of those revolver calibers, the first thing you notice is how cartoonishly large they are (and heavy) because of how much beefier all those mechanisms need to be.

So a magnum can deliver similar energy to small/medium rifle calibers because you're typically talking about a projectile that's 3-5 times the weight, even if its moving at only 2/3rds the velocity or so.

Now, the blunter design of the projectile might not literally break through the armor, but even-so will cause massive, likely debilitating tissue and/or bone damage. Its certainly better not to have perforated heart or lung, its certainly better to not experience the internal damage caused by hydro-static shock from a fast-moving projectile entering your body -- but its no fun having 4 broken ribs and a collapsed lung or bruised heart either; that person's no longer in the fight either way. Games simplify by treating both parties as dead, that's all.

Ah, that makes sense... explains the massive Size of the Double Eagle for sure!

Well, that naturally depends on the type of body armour.... a magnum bullet impact on a plate armour would certainly knock back the person more, and the shock of the impact will be far greater, but given that the bullet design most probably will not allow it to penetrate the ceramic plate that is able to withstand the point rifle bullets travelling at far greater speeds, the actual physical damage will be more or less the same as with the plate absording any other kind of below-heavy-machinegun-ammo:

Hurting rips and maybe some bruises, but not much more... that is exactly what the plate has been designed for.

Certainly there are secondary effects that might be greater for a Magnum bullet impact versus the 9mm (the stronger blowback might actually slam the guy against a wall strong enough to knock him out, he might be pushed over a ledge, the ceramic plate has most probably a higher chance to crack and get damaged than when withstanding a 9mm bullet).

And of course, I wouldn't want to test kevlar vests against magnum bullets... even if the Kevlar tissue can stop the magnum bullet, the greater impact energy will bend the the Kevlar vest farther inward and cause a bigger wound behind the area of impact on the vest.

Aparently people have died from such wounds before, and seeing how non-military vests are designed to stop normal pistol rounds, I guess besides non-penetrating hits to especially vulnerable regions rounds with higher than normal impact energy like magnum rounds might be to blame.

And having Informed myself in the internet more, it seems Magnum round where started to be used by the FBI BECAUSE criminals started using bulletproof vests in 1920's.... I wouldn't count on the same ammo penetrating a reasonable kevlar vest today, but still, that is quite remarkable for non-pointed pistol ammo.

Depends entirely upon the body armor.

I seriously suggest you research into the resistant abilities of organic and non organic materials.

But a brief summary is thus

[Snipped]

Good list you have there. Pretty useful, even though a little bit of gibberish to many european readers (imperial units, doh! ;))

The one point I am not sure about is that Class IV stop everything besides Magnum Pistol rounds... where does this information come from? Form what I read on the internet, type III stops everything up to 7.9x51mm, which is the classical Rifle round used in the World wars... surely a Magnum round fired at half the muzzle velocity will have not more energy on impact than a classic rifle round (might be heavier, but the difference in speed is quite large)?

Class IV seems to be protected against AP ammo in addition, so again, should be able to defeat Magnum ammo, right?

Is there some new Magnum super Ammo that has this much more penetrative power?

You could group them based on the distance they could shoot, for example short-ranged weapons doing low damage, middle ranged doing middle damage and so on. Not fully realistic but is simple.

You could do that, but that wouldn't be very accurate or realistic... see discussion above about Magnum pistols. Don't count the average user to able to hit anything with such a large handgun beyond 25m, yet its penetrative power and expecially damage to soft tissue would be far greater than what can be achieved with longer ranged, more accurate weapons with smaller/lighter ammunition.

Case in point, even with the current NATO standart 9mm pistols, it seems to be very hard hitting anything at 50m with normal combat stances.

Yet the Mauser C96 with its original ammunition (smaller caliber, bigger powder charge) was rated for 150-200m range (most probably when using the optional stock)...

Granted, that "pistol" is quite a large and unwieldy weapon in itself, and turns into a carbine with its stock attached, but still, the 9mm round was favoured in the 20th century over earlier, smaller calibers BECAUSE of the higher effect it had on soft targets.

Question is why simplify things this far? What exactly is complicated at separating damage from range (or range from accuray, or penetrative power from damage)? More numbers for the players to crunch, but the crunchers will always want more numbers to play their crunching game with, and the others will be confused no matter what, you will need to explain yourself anyway.

Just put a text besides the numbers explaining in layman terms what the weapon does (for example "lon barreled weapon firing a small caliber round at a high muzzle velocity. Very good range, very accurate, good penetrative power, but low damage on impact")

World of Warships does this quite well. Everything is modelled to quite a lot of details (listing every AA gun on the ship for example)... you CAN read exactly how many guns and Torps your ships has and do the math yourself.

But there is also a single number per broad category ("Mobility", "Survilability", "Artillery", and so on) basically giving players that cannot or do not want to do the math themselves some kind of a hint what to expect when comparing two ships.

The System doesn't tell these players exactly how much damage their ship does versus what another does. But it will give them quite a good idea how those ships compare... which is the whole point in this case.

Good list you have there. Pretty useful, even though a little bit of gibberish to many european readers (imperial units, doh! ;))

The one point I am not sure about is that Class IV stop everything besides Magnum Pistol rounds... where does this information come from? Form what I read on the internet, type III stops everything up to 7.9x51mm, which is the classical Rifle round used in the World wars... surely a Magnum round fired at half the muzzle velocity will have not more energy on impact than a classic rifle round (might be heavier, but the difference in speed is quite large)?

Class IV seems to be protected against AP ammo in addition, so again, should be able to defeat Magnum ammo, right?

there some new Magnum super Ammo that has this much more penetrative power?

Yeah, it can seem kind of confusing.

That's what happens when NATO, Russia and America all decide to mix and match the naming systems of their rounds.

Real quick, there is imperial and metric measurement for the caliber of rounds.

.308 is the same thing as 7.62x51 and 7.62 Nato, from a purely mathematical point, same as .223 and 5.56x42 and 5.56 NATO, but all rounds, even within their certain types, have different "loads", different individual parts that make em up. The actual bullet may be heavier or lighter, among engineers and gun enthusiasts, we refer to this as the "grain" of the bullet, this is a very fine unit of measurement where 437.5 grains actually equals an ounce. Many also use different quantities of gun powder to achieve different velocities when the round is shot. Funny, isn't it? Which is why I had to explain the M855a1 because your regular 5.56, while weaker than 7.62x51, can defeat level 3 body armor, which ties in with the next point.

I might have explained it wrong but with pistol and rifle cartridges, they both have their magnum class of rounds and classes of rounds.

For pistols its

Small pistol and large pistol, which are almost entirely indistinguishable in everything but the firearm's ability to be converted, IE a small pistol chambered handgun cannot have its barrel swapped out and be able to shoot a large pistol round for the most part, while a large pistol chambered handgun can take be, but not always.

And then you have pistol magnum cartridges which are over grown large pistol rounds. these are .357 magnum, .44 magnum, .50 AE and .500 S&W.

For rifles its

Intermediate rounds. These are like 5.56, 5.45x39, 7.62x39 and that 5.8 retardation the Chinese are using. They're smaller, lighter and you're meant to carry a good amount of it. These are used most commonly in what people call "Assault Rifles." IE Firearms that are capable of fully automatic fire. If its not capable as such, it's just a regular rifle chambered in an Intermediate cartridge.

Full power cartridges. These are like 7.62x51, 7.62x54R or rimmed and .30-06. These are bigger, heavier and most commonly used in actual machine guns and Battle Rifles which is something of a neologism that doesn't really mean anything outside of a different way to distinguish firearms chambered in Full Power rounds from from those in intermediate rounds. Though there is some specifics to them, those being that a battle rifle must be chambered in a Full Power round and be semi automatic and/or capable of full.

Note that there are more rounds of each type than listed, if I were to list them all, I'd be here all day and still not have gotten them all.

Now Rifle Magnum cartridges. These are rounds bigger and even more powerful than full power cartridges, typically to the point where they are able to be moved up a class. The three most typical are .300 Winchester magnum, .300 Winchester short magnum and .338 Lapua. For reference, the .300 win mag has the same sized bullet as 7.62x51 BUT the key different is the case, the brass tube that houses it, in .300 win mag, it's longer, which allows more powder which gives it a net bonus in it's velocity of about 25%, making it go about an extra 200 m/s faster. .338 is similar, only it's bullet is twice as heavy as the lightest 7.62 bullet used in 7.62x51 and .300 win mag, and goes just as fast as the .300 win mag.

Thus the magnum designations. These rounds just go so fast, are so powerful that they are able to defeat our most powerful of body armor. the .300 win mag I mentioned, in order for body armor to sustain a hit from it considering its 25% more powerful than 7.62x51, would mean it'd have to be an extra pound in weight, and quarter of an inch thicker, multiply that by 2.5 for having back and side plates as well. But that also means it won't stop .338 lapua, Assuming that they're not also Armor Piercing as well, this also means that they're only capable of taking a single hit with odds of defeating the round greater than 50% in less than ideal conditions, that's typically what defeat means in the body armor industry.

So in a game balancing situation what should this mean?

To keep with reality, any gun that is chambered in this round weighs 25+ pounds, ammo is INCREDIBLY rare, INCREDIBLY expensive, in america .338 lapua is 5 to 6 dollars a round, making your average box of 20 around 100 dollars unless you reload your own, its heavy, over 4 times the weight of 5.56, but it defeats all body armor for humans, and any mutants or monsters you encounter, nothing but the absolute toughest armor is able to defeat it, and even then is able to take one hit before breaking. This doesn't mean however, that it also absorbs the shock of the round impacting it, without harm, just none of the fleshy harm caused by the round tearing through you.

Yeah, it can seem kind of confusing.

That's what happens when NATO, Russia and America all decide to mix and match the naming systems of their rounds.

Real quick, there is imperial and metric measurement for the caliber of rounds.

.308 is the same thing as 7.62x51 and 7.62 Nato, from a purely mathematical point, same as .223 and 5.56x42 and 5.56 NATO, but all rounds, even within their certain types, have different "loads", different individual parts that make em up. The actual bullet may be heavier or lighter, among engineers and gun enthusiasts, we refer to this as the "grain" of the bullet, this is a very fine unit of measurement where 437.5 grains actually equals an ounce. Many also use different quantities of gun powder to achieve different velocities when the round is shot. Funny, isn't it? Which is why I had to explain the M855a1 because your regular 5.56, while weaker than 7.62x51, can defeat level 3 body armor, which ties in with the next point.

I might have explained it wrong but with pistol and rifle cartridges, they both have their magnum class of rounds and classes of rounds.

For pistols its

Small pistol and large pistol, which are almost entirely indistinguishable in everything but the firearm's ability to be converted, IE a small pistol chambered handgun cannot have its barrel swapped out and be able to shoot a large pistol round for the most part, while a large pistol chambered handgun can take be, but not always.

And then you have pistol magnum cartridges which are over grown large pistol rounds. these are .357 magnum, .44 magnum, .50 AE and .500 S&W.

For rifles its

Intermediate rounds. These are like 5.56, 5.45x39, 7.62x39 and that 5.8 retardation the Chinese are using. They're smaller, lighter and you're meant to carry a good amount of it. These are used most commonly in what people call "Assault Rifles." IE Firearms that are capable of fully automatic fire. If its not capable as such, it's just a regular rifle chambered in an Intermediate cartridge.

Full power cartridges. These are like 7.62x51, 7.62x54R or rimmed and .30-06. These are bigger, heavier and most commonly used in actual machine guns and Battle Rifles which is something of a neologism that doesn't really mean anything outside of a different way to distinguish firearms chambered in Full Power rounds from from those in intermediate rounds. Though there is some specifics to them, those being that a battle rifle must be chambered in a Full Power round and be semi automatic and/or capable of full.

Note that there are more rounds of each type than listed, if I were to list them all, I'd be here all day and still not have gotten them all.

Now Rifle Magnum cartridges. These are rounds bigger and even more powerful than full power cartridges, typically to the point where they are able to be moved up a class. The three most typical are .300 Winchester magnum, .300 Winchester short magnum and .338 Lapua. For reference, the .300 win mag has the same sized bullet as 7.62x51 BUT the key different is the case, the brass tube that houses it, in .300 win mag, it's longer, which allows more powder which gives it a net bonus in it's velocity of about 25%, making it go about an extra 200 m/s faster. .338 is similar, only it's bullet is twice as heavy as the lightest 7.62 bullet used in 7.62x51 and .300 win mag, and goes just as fast as the .300 win mag.

Ah, okay, Magnum rifle rounds... forgot about those.

Don't worry about the imperial units... I am pretty versed in those. Us metric folks just like to tease the "imperialists" from time to time

Still nice to make a little reference for other people living in the metric system world. Conversion is just a quick googling away, but only when you know what units are used... its inches, and the US caliber system has the nasty habit of not mentioning that. They do for larger caliber weapons (like 3" guns), but why call the M2 Browning a .5 caliber weapon instead of 0.5"?

Still better than the UK folks with their "pounds".... if you don't know, you will never be able to guess the caliber from knowing "its a 20 pounder shell"...

Ah, but you only need to explain yourself when you have confused your users to begin with!

What causes people to be confused, and ultimately to disengage with the choices you ask them to make is an overload of choices. Too many choices with too little space between them (vanishing subtleties) or with too much space between them (apples-to-oranges) when their applicability are unclear is confusing. When these things happen, there are too many variables for the average person to compute in a way that's meaningful to them, and studies show that they either opt-out entirely, or essentially choose one at random from a set of close-enoughs.

To keep people engaged in decisions, they need to understand the impact of discrete choices (that is, when are apples preferable and when are oranges preferable), and be able to measure quantitative values. A good example of this would be how many games model attack ability with some kind of power measure (attack points) modified by elemental damage modifiers -- you have two orthogonal axis to consider, one of which is apples-to-oranges, and the other is quantatative. In this system, a fire weapon of attack power 12 is clearly greater than a fire weapon with attack power 8, or a fire weapon and ice weapon of equal attack power will be clearly greater depending on the circumstances you find yourself in. A weapon might also have a special ability or effect on a third axis to suit different playing styles. Those are all meaningful choices. Destiny builds on a similar base system, but adds separate stats for impact, range, reload speed, etc -- while those are important stats to consider, it results in information overload IMO, and it probably would have been better for them to remove some of that info as fine-grained stats, and instead simply say things like "Gun XYZ is known for its extremely fast reload" -- because no one really can compare what it means for one weapons reload bar to be slightly longer than another's, especially if its range is slightly lower as well.

Here's a good TED talk on how curating choices and choice experiences leads to greater engagement and more thoughtful choosing, even though conventional wisdom says that having more choices is always better.

Well, I understand that, but I also understand that you usually have to cater to two different groups: the masses that get confused easely and don't want to be, and the number crunchers that love to be confused and overcome it.

So your simplified system might cater to group one (which may or may not be the majority of players anyway), but will certainly drive away group 2. To them, the metagame and number crunching IS the game, playing the game and winning against less informed players is just collecting the price for their hard work.

Balancing between information overload for group one and choice starvation for group two is certainly a big challenge, as is designing the mechanics in a way to give group two a reward when they are able to crack the numbers and find optimal solutions, while NOT totally overpowering group one with their optimal build in a way that feels unfair.

Still, dumbing down too much will drive away a considerable part of your potential playerbase and will actually dumb down the Metagame a lot, which happens to give you free publicity from increased community interaction.