It's also a matter of workload. If you give me guns with finished pixel art, that's taking 50-75% workload off me (depending on gfx quality), but 25% times 40 guns is still 10 other objects which might be more interesting to the player. If you just throw an idea, I have to choose between more or less useless 'variety' gun and something which actually is needed to call it 1.0.
About the hammer... no, dropping its damage (which DOES heavily depend on Melee) would be too gamey. A hammer is a hammer. Well, this is a magical hammer that always hits, but it still has its mass. The very fact that Meridian calls it 'the only reliable weapon' means it has to be nerfed. Not much. I'm just upping the TU use from 24 to 30 (and the same goes for its little brother, Pickaxe, 20 to 26 TUs). And Stamina cost stays the same as it is now. Once your gals get 90-100 TUs, 30 won't be that painful. See? No less dependable, just more Kamikaze 
Otoh, Meridian, no more 100% Fire Immune enemies, as you have unassailably reasoned! Except for Power Armor, but I'm thinking about making them vulnerable too, but only to WP shells (0.1 Fire Res will reduce their fire damage to taking 1 HP per each 6 Flamer blasts/flaming floors, and immune to catching fire, but still able to be somewhat burnt by eg. Mortar WP shells - they'll cause 4-13 damage, which might make a difference on a 40-60 HP enemy). I need also to rething gal's Fire Res, naturally... the 'no more fire res' should work both ways...
EDIT: actually, I think there are too many weapons available from the start, discouraging reading, I'd rather move some of the non-neccesities (like, not the Panzerfaust for sure, it has to stay) to a bulk Contact-like, early & cheap research so the player is introduced more gradually. But Moar Gunz seems like a good idea (if not worth the huge effort at this point).
Well..time for a "call to arms"? Maybe
someone may want to open a thread where to post contributions? (seriously, no joke)ù!) Wuld be an awesome thing!! I made a preyy pathetic attempt
opening my own thread but' i'm abolutely sure you guys here may be lots better!! Take for example
gifty's garage or other possibly sources for inspiration may be
here@Arthanor: I'm kinda curious to see some contributions of yours!!
@Dioxine, i absolutely agree with what you stated above, especially to more gradually introduced weapons; fort example heavy shotgun and combat shotgun should not be present in the black market, these are kinda more advanced weapons to be stolen/researched from other factions; eventually these may be fine replaced by a carabine in the BM, something intermediate between SMG and a rifle with a bit less TU required to fire than a rifle but no autoshot. (m-14 ruger maybe?)
Another interestin' thing i already wrote some posts ago is related muskets and flintlocks pistols: 1 shot per chamber for both, but balls magazine with 5 bullets instead of 3, firing and reloading TU are fine as they are now. That would make the game a bit more realistic, also more "melee-oriented" (at least at the beginning, but mostly would be a serious incentive to player to keep looting/researching better weapons.
