First off, the reason there are so many types of weapons that have very similar stats is to make the looting more fun. The more weapons you add to the game, the more variations in enemy load-outs there will be and you can create factions with a specific weapon suopplyer wihout them all carrying the same weapons. How would you like it if after an encounter all you would find was 18 AK-74's and 2 RPK's? It would make the game pretty boring after a while, at least I think so. One can of course set the percentage chance of a weapon turing up in a shop to prevent the cluttering of the screen, having some weapons only have a 10% chance. In my experience that woul mean running around trying to find a trader that sells the weapon I want. I made a compromise in the BSM and gave all the weapons a 50% chance, it reduces the clutter and there's still no need to run around too much.
I read somewhere that damage is calculated with a formula that also takes the distance to the target. This means that if you shoot someone at point blank range their damage would be bigger than if you shot them from a distance. Then there's the various settings in the AMMOINFO file that are added to the formula, like caliber, tumbling and whatnot. The more you play around whith these figures, the more you'll realize what a impressive and complex system it is.
Take the 5.56x45 and the.458 as an example. If you gave a weapon with the same stats the ability to fire both these rounds, you'd find that the range of the 5.56 round is far greater. This is becase the calculations for them includes their weight, and other attibutes. And since the .458 weighs more it also decreses the accuracy, range and several other things. Do as Safoolfool, play around with it a bit and you'll get a better idea of what I'm trying to say
And yes, SUM stands for Stefan Uribe Modified, him being the weapon smitty from BE5 that I added to 7.62 for sentimental reasons
