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so like, i went ahead and tested most of the guns against their competitors and found that every single one is different by enough to validate their existence compared to others... how to the f*ck ever these differences were predominantly in variances of fire rate, penetration, recoil, and reload time in addition to their other stats.
take the tac14 shotgun for example. this thing looks dumb compared to its competitors but it by far has the most penetration of all of the shotguns with 32% penetration vs 17% on the 870, 9% on the super 90, and just over 8% of the aa12 (also all of the accuracy ratings for shotguns are wrong as all of their baseline spreads are different despite the aa12 and super 90 saying they have the same accuracy despite being different and the 870 and the belgian [though a pistol] having the same accuracy but wildly different spreads).
the vector is another example, it has extremely high fire rate and almost no recoil compared to the other two smgs, but has very little penetration. the ump45 on the other hand has a LOT of penetration doing a little over 62% base damage to the second target (compared to the vector's 25%).
frankly, it would be really easy to showcase this as a stat. make every 100% of penetration be full damage on the next target. so 300% penetration would deal full damage to the next 3 targets after the first, but would not pass through the fourth target hit. less than 100% would confer a last hit at X% of the power, assuming it is still within range. this seeeems to be how penetration works until the projectile would pass its maximum range after penetrating a target, after which point it does not do damage to the farthest target, even if normally falloff damage would allow it to... there really aren't many trios of dummies that can be shot on a single line making this hard to test exactly, even with the barret m95 (which can penetrate at least 3 targets with all of its damage intact with the long barrel mod equipped).
CORRECTION: penetration works as a function of range and a penetration value. assault rifles (which i normally don't like and thus didn't test til now) have enough range to make use of the far right side trio of dummies and i have determined that each weapon will have a specific amount that its damage is multiplicatively reduced by for each target it penetrates. in the case of the m4 carbine, this number is 50% making it very easy to eyeball this goofiness on the third target. in the m4's case, it goes from 15.2 on the primary target, 7.6 on the secondary, and 3 on the third target HOWEVER the damage the third target takes at the same range is mother f*cking 12. in other words, every time a target is penetrated, the projectile has its damage multiplied by this penetration value. in this case that would result in: 0, 50% damage loss, then 75% (fourth would be 87.5%, fifth 93.75% and so on assuming there's no limit to targets that can be penetrated). all sniper rifles (including the ranch rifle which is listed as an assault rifle), on the other hand, do not have a value. they always deal 100% of their damage. SO they can deal an absolute f*cktonne of damage to things bunched up or behind something or whatever (again, suuuuuuper important information when comparing one weapon to another). their only limiting factor would be range which they have in spades anyway. the scar which also doesn't have such a penetration detriment is so far the only testable exception to this i could find so i presume there's some kind of range detriment when penetrating a target (it does 18.7 damage when penetrating 2 other targets but 23 when penetrating one or zero targets at the same range)
ANYWAY! point is, i think this miscommunication is why some people think some weapons are generic. looking at just the stats available ingame this is definitely the case... however in practice there are more stats in play than what is shown to the player in the ui.
PS: please add the saiga 12 automatic shotgun to the game at some point, that thing would make a truly ridiculous alternative to the aa12 in that it has almost no recoil control irl making it EXTREMELY difficult to keep on target thus allowing it some very amusing balancing opportunity.
TL;DR: fire rate, penetration, recoil, reload time, and any others i am not immediately aware of need to be added to the weapons' stat menus.
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