This is a collection of ideas about possible reworks/tweaks that could be made to improve and diversify the gunplay and underlying factors that contribute to playing with a gun build. I almost exclusively use guns as opposed to melee or archery, so this is mostly based on my personal experience.
Part the First: Turrets
Almost every turret you’ll see in the game is most likely going to be an M249, with the other two variants being extremely rare and the 9mm turret removed. I’ve never seen a single M240 turret, and only one M2HB turret a very long time ago (on 0.F or 0.E stable). Realistically, most turrets should be M240s, as 5.56 is an intermediate round more suited to infantry weapons due to lower weight and recoil, while 7.62x51 (M240 food) is much better for emplaced positions, which every turret functionally is. It doesn’t exactly make sense to use a weaker round for positions where the disadvantages of the most common full power rifle round are completely mitigated, alongside the advantages of 5.56 not providing any benefit. If most M249 turrets were to be replaced with M240s, there would not be any significant difference in their strength as the 5.56 turret already shreds anything within range. Furthermore, it would serve to alleviate the 5.56 spam currently present and bring a somewhat neglected round back to it’s realistic availability in military loot pools. The extra firepower gained per turret could be countered by smaller belt sizes (two 250 round belts versus two 500 round belts per turret, for example). As for the M2HB turret, it should spawn near or within containment cell hallways in labs/medbay area in the Trans Coast Logistics (as security to stop test subjects from getting out).
Part the Second: Magazines as Upgrades
One time, when I was using the Artyom’s Emporium mod, I used an AK-101. The particularly interesting thing about the gun was that it used 5.56 (arguably the most common ammunition in the game) and had reasonable stats, but was still bottlenecked by magazine availability. Finding a new magazine for it genuinely felt like an upgrade rather than “oh wow, another ten STANAGs”. Currently, there are three weapons that could benefit from this idea: the AUG, G36, and MAS .223. Each of these is very rare and extra magazines are practically non-existent, which is completely unjustified considering they have nearly the same stats as an AR-15. I believe that all of them should be buffed to be at least marginally better than the AR, as well as heavily increasing their chance to spawn in gun store safes. Magazines should also be more common, but at most only one per gun should spawn in one (unlooted) gun store. this would make these guns more viable, as well as introduce a sense of accomplishment in getting one kitted out with several magazines.
Part the Third: The Private Resort Problem
Private resorts are practically the only place where you can find some of the most interesting guns in the entire game (AKM, AK-74M, Makarov pistol, Tokarev pistol elephant gun, .700 NX ammo, and the mags for those guns). Unfortunately, the resort itself is full of hundreds of zombies, and evolution only makes the tight, dark mess of it’s interior spaces harder to clear out. With the sheer ammo and time investment to clear it out, it would only be expected for it to have buckets of ammunition and guns lying around. However, the entire area where these weapons are kept is a grand total of 14 safes, which are hidden behind metal bars and unpickable steel doors. for all that effort, you get maybe a few hundred rounds total, and maybe two guns that actually have ammunition and the magazines to fire it from. This does not make any sense, as it just soft locks players out of using interesting and not even necessarily good weapons for no reason. It’s easier to clear out a lab or two and walk out with Rivtech weapons than to even touch one of the resort guns. Some of these also spawn in mansions, but usually any mansion weapon spawns are small and have about half the amount of usable weapons, so they don’t solve the problem. Fixing this would either take making clearing a resort worthwhile (maybe an underground bunker section with good loot and less zombies present would help) or distributing resort guns to other loot pools.
In conclusion, these are my ideas for improving the general firearms situation in the game. I don’t currently plan to take any of these to GitHub, but feedback would be appreciated nonetheless. Thanks for reading!