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But as we know this game'll have a Hit Location die, that kinda obviates that rationale, I fear.

Oh, does it? I watched most of the demo game and don't recall seeing that. Then again I did zone out and multitask for a bunch of it.

Yeah ... here's what they said about the combat system in one of the updates on Kickstarter [my italics]:
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Combat is designed to be fast and brutal, but still yield realistic results. If your attack hits your target, you roll the hit location die to see where and apply the effects of armor. If you take enough damage or stress you'll be incapacitated and out of action for some time, but the real danger is critical injuries. Every weapon has a Crit threshold - if your attack causes damage equal to or in excess of the Crit rating, the target suffers a critical injury, which can have crippling or even fatal effects. Some crits can kill immediately, other within minutes, hours, or even days. The game includes detailed crit tables for piercing, slashing and bludgeoning damage, for each hit location (head, torso, arms, legs).

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I am not entirely sure the demo game ran the rules correctly ... there seem to be some contradictions.

But it's all pre-Alpha WIP of course ... I'm sure this'll be ironed out to some level of clarity by the time backers get the Alpha.

One way to differentiate the effectiveness of a weapon system is to match their range bands to real world. Most gun range practice for pistols are 25-30 yards/meters. Carbine is 100-300+. The weapons can shoot farther but at a significantly harder factor. The game difference between an M-16A1 and an A2 may boil down to different range bands while keeping same bullet damage die. Thoughts??

That is an interesting thought! Another possible yardstick might be what range brackets the weapon's standard sights are adjustable to.

Both methods have some potential merits, but also their own drawbacks. For instance, even though they would use the same ranges for practice, not every rifle-calibre weapon is equally effective (i.e. in wounding potential drop-off and hit probability drop-off) at 300m; nor is every pistol-calibre weapon equally effective at 30m.

Likewise, some weapons have fairly optimistic standard sights ... for instance, the assumption implicit in the m/45's 100-200-300m flip-sights — i.e that the weapon actually was effective enough at 300m to warrant the feature — was in my view all but pure fantasy.

In the end, I believe assessing each weapon on its individual characteristics and the attendant physics will yield more solid stats than applying a blanket tool. But it does assume the technical knowledge to make a relevant assessment.

In the end, I believe assessing each weapon on its individual characteristics and the attendant physics will yield more solid stats than applying a blanket tool. But it does assume the technical knowledge to make a relevant assessment.

The problem with that idea is that many weapons performed poorly for ergonomic reasons rather than physics reasons, despite technical data that proves a fairly good bit of hardware. The Taurus 10mm one of my roommates bought was theoretically a great weapon. Excellent bench performance, good round, enough mass to reduce felt recoil... but it had severe issues with slide-bite for him. The grip-safety bit me. The trigger guard was too small for our standard Army issue leather gloves. The recoil was very sharp. Not hard, but very sharp and sudden (the frame stopped the slide recoil, at least with the ammo R bought). And that was a new-in-the-cosmoline one.

The Walther PPK and the Čzech Zobriska CZ50 both had issues for many due to the rake angle of the grip making it uncomfortable and/or inaccurate; others, like me, found it a very natural point shooting grip. That's a very real world factor that's best just abstracted out. R couldn't hit the 8 ring at 25m with it; while I was able to point shoot the standard humaniform silhouette all inside the 7, with most in the 9 ring. Aimed, almost always the 9 ring, and with the same weapon that R couldn't hit with. B, like myself, found it comfortable.

The Firestar 45 is another "looks good on paper" - but unless you have big hands, it's potentially uncomfortable to hold due to the double-stacked in-grip detachable magazine making the grip a bit wide. I found it nice, but R couldn't get a comfortable grip. Another friend had one, we both fired it, and I found the rake angle of the grip a bit odd, and R bruised the webbing of his thumb firing it.

And the M16, like a good number of other weapons, has one other nasty bit of ergonomics issue: it's built for right handed shooters, and a lefty can, if not careful, wind up with brass in the face. Even with a brass deflector, it's still less comfortable to shoot it lefty due to gas in the face as it ejects.

The problem with that idea is that many weapons performed poorly for ergonomic reasons rather than physics reasons, despite technical data that proves a fairly good bit of hardware.

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And the M16, like a good number of other weapons, has one other nasty bit of ergonomics issue: it's built for right handed shooters, and a lefty can, if not careful, wind up with brass in the face. Even with a brass deflector, it's still less comfortable to shoot it lefty due to gas in the face as it ejects.

Hard to agree with this more. It's worth adding that the ergonomics of bullpup rifles suck, especially for lefties. If you get a kaboom that chamber is right by your face.

Individual ergonomic compatibility is of course a matter all its own. For my own part, I haven't fired a bullpup that disagreed with me ... but I'm not a lefty.

I don't see that the fact that some weapons disagree with some shooters is an argument against assessing weapons on their individual merits or lack thereof. I'd still prefer that to using a blanket system that groups weapons into the same stats based on category rather than factual characteristics.

Given what little difference we see in the demo, the range of values is sufficiently low that any kind of detailed conversion is going to be pretty much "they all are mechanically identical" anyway.

The demo is of course just a pre-Alpha draft of the system, and I'm not all that convinced the people running it are all that well read up on it.

But that said, what you say may still turn out to be case — if the resolution of the system's "matrix" is very coarse, there won't be any way to differentiate hardware characteristics beyond a very basic level, if that.

But my worry is that if the resolution is made low enough, you'd basically get down to just having four weapons: single-shot pistol calibre (pistols/revolvers), automatic pistol calibre (SMG's), single-shot rifle calibre (sniper rifles), and automatic rifle calibre (assault rifles), and that's it. You could even make that two — pistol or rifle calibre weapons — only with or without automatic fire.
Actually, make the resolution really low, and you can streamline it down to "ranged weapons" (as opposed to "melee weapons"), period.
And that may be perfect for the right game — but I strongly believe T2k isn't that game.

As I've said in another thread: a degree of granularity that fails to resolve even a one-in-five-or-six difference in weapon stats — i.e. the difference between needing to roll e.g over a 3 vs. a 4 on a D6; or over a 5 vs. a 7 on a D10 — would really be inappropriately low for a Twilight: 2000 game.

It's just like any other question of resolution: imagine you have a library of hi-res "portrait" shots of a variety of weapons. You can pull down the resolution quite far and still be able to identify the individual weapons. At some point, weapons very close to one another will start to become indistinguishable, which in many cases may be just as it should be.
But when all you have is a library of virtually identical clusters of square blocks, then you've gone too far.

It's the same thing here. The resolution would need to be fine enough to make the choice e.g. between a 250mm barrel 5.56mm or a 500mm barrel 5.56mm weapon meaningful.
Or, putting it another way: just for instance, the AUG and the AKM, or the FNC, or the L85A1, or the G3, or the M4 ... these really aren't the same weapon; and to my mind, a T2k game that can't make the difference mechanically significant can hardly be deemed to provide a successful rendition of its subject matter.

Vader, I think you know from our conversations that I've thought a fair amount on the topic. I honestly think that in the context of a role playing game, the level of granularity you're looking for isn't needed. That you or I might want it, I don't dispute. We know from the KS that there are 60-80 weapon cards, I don't know if that includes the stretch goal that expands the gear by 50%. Obviously enough, we don't know what the details will include for each weapon. The stretch goals include ammo dice and hit location dice so they hint at the rules that will be presented in the alpha.

All this is to say, I am trying not to get my hopes up that the combat system will be close to what I want it to be.

The generation (can I call it that?) of rules that the original T2K came from hasn't survived in production. They may offer detail, they aren't good to play. From the limited number of posters here it would seem that most aren't still playing the old game. I think the two aspects are linked, detail and crunch bog down rules and make the game slow to play. In a game, there's a time to speed things up and slow things down but the rules should never get in the way of the story.

I've other thoughts about a different style of solo game play where the rules form the basis for game prep. Over the course of my gaming I've "played" this way heavily. In that context, the detail is a benefit and speed of play is irrelevant. It's an off shoot of an RPG that I don't know if FL are figuring this into v4, I'd guess they aren't.