Choices and Real World Weapons

Lately I've been learning a lot about firearms. Its really quite interesting. One of the most fascinating things about real-world weapons, however, are the multitude of actual choices to be made. When selecting a firearm there are a huge number of options, but all of the choices basically come down to tradeoffs in performance. You can gain some factors, but lose others. Just off the top of my nugget, in no particular order, you have:

- Price of weapon
- Price of ammunition in that caliber
- Effectiveness of ammunition in the caliber
- Ease of acquiring ammunition (scarcity)
- Weight of weapon
- Action type (auto, semi-auto, bolt, etc)
- Ruggedness/durability
- Ease of MX
- Accuracy
- Effective Range
- Concealment
- Legality in various jurisdictions
- Ease of use
- Rate of fire
- Number of rounds carried
And many more.

For example, a pistol caliber carbine (that is, a short rifle chambered to use a small handgun round) has inferior range compared to a rifle, inferior effectiveness of ammunition compared to a rifle, and inferior concealment to a handgun. However, they are often inexpensive, easy to use, use cheaper ammunition, and you can carry many rounds more easily.

A .22 target rifle is cheap and uses cheap, widely available ammunition but has limited effectiveness.

A handgun may be very concealable but generally lacks range and accuracy compared to a longarm.

Each weapon type has a niche that it can fill with varying tradeoffs. That's why you can ask a forum full of firearms experts "what weapon is best for personal defense?" and get many different answers.

I think weapons in an RPG which is fundamentally about combat should have similar choices. That is, Weapon A should not be strictly better than Weapon B, but it should have tradeoffs that make it an interesting choice between the two in both acquisition and tactical usage.