Asthner, I am a gun enthusiast IRL and preserving the realistic feeling of JA2 is a top priority for me.

I believe in making the ballistics of the weapons, and their handling, behave in a way that is as consistent with life as possible when doing so does not compromise game balance. The two areas I would first look to compromise realism in favor of game balance are gun prices (a gun that's cheap in real life needing to be rather expensive to balance its usefulness), and reduced damage (see below rant).

The key to quick incapacitation is shot placement at the CNS or spine - anything else, from any weapon, is not a guaranteed kill and instead may result in a "bleed out".

I can see how character stats can balance the weapons and let them grow into their own niche... so... another problem is: if weapons are still very deadly at all in general, the game will continue to favor camping in one place way too often, so what would you do about that? (At least in Iron Man mode.) If the guns are going to stay deadly something needs to be done to make movement, flanking and positioning less of a bad gamble in general (since it eats your AP pool and gives you nothing back).

If you could make both combat aproaches equally effective, then merc specialization could draw the line between them. A dedicated marksman could be able to perform deadly precise shots which are AP expensive though, but won't be able to suppress i.e. deal with larger number of enemies. A dedicated machinegunner on the other hand would be as deadly as the sniper with his own method - spraying bursts after bursts keeping even 10 enemies down until he beat the hell outta them.

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a) Make aiming more AP expensive, but still effective..
b) Increase auto-fire rate of all weapons (there is a single ini setting for this)

'Range' of weapon needs to be more important, aimed autofire is really overpowered.
The bonus range from slugs is useless, because 'range' overall is useless.
I have tons of slugs now, I'll do some more shooting after I find a 2x scope and a rifled choke.

Why do some shotguns need so much aimclicks to fully aim? SPAS-15 has like, 6 of them!

@Sandro -- Says the guy working on a custom interrupt system. =P

I don't want to step on your toes, but I'm going to do whatever it takes for me to enjoy the game... the more I think about it, that probably means messing with the interrupt system at some point. But that's for me (and to balance Iron Man especially).

ETA: Dang Sandro, you've done a lot of modding! I'm going to plug the weapon XML changes into "Sandro's Mod" when I start another playthrough and balancing iteration, and try to get a feel for what you have done.

In regards to shotguns and aiming levels, in real life shotguns have pretty similar ergonomics to rifles.

The idea behind ALs is to represent the fact that you can only get so much out of aiming certain weapons, for example, the ordinary shooter can only get about 1/4th the accuracy of an aimed pistol as compared to a rifle. ALs compensate the shooter who uses the weapon with lower potential for accuracy by letting them achieve the maximum aim faster.

Shotguns are definitely more accurate than pistols in terms of where the barrel is pointing when you pull the trigger due to the fact that they have rifle-like ergonomics, hence the shotgun receives more ALs, a higher accuracy stat, and a higher raise AP cost. Important note: it's important to distinguish between accuracy (where you pointed the barrel) and the dispersion area of the pellets/darts around the center of the barrel when you fire. The second attribute needs to be reflected in the barrel choke, and ammo type.

Thoughts?

Hrm... you know, I just realized I'm incredibly biased in my opinions on shotgun handling, too, because I've never bothered with slugs.

Shotguns may have similar ergonomics to rifles, but when you are dealing with shot you aren't taking the time to aim as precisely as with a rifle. So just as slow to ready, but faster to aim and shoot. Of course, that would change completely with a slug, wouldn't it? With only one projectile you would become more concerned with the true vector of that barrel, and that would require as much aiming as a rifle.

In game, I guess that means shotguns using buckshot should have a solid chance to hit with part of the scatter when not fully aiming. It actually might already be this way, but I'm not sure.

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That is weird, I was already fixing that bug. Gotta check it again, thanks for the saying.
Apart from that, what else do mean by IIS not working for you?