Hello,.... and sorry to Leonid and all the players who gave an endorsement to your point of view. I disgree with most of what you're wishing for.
From time to time the forum repeatedly flares up with one of three counter POVs that (respectfully) challenge Dust's structure: One is the POV from the Classic FPS gamers among us who suggested Dust should correct itself and join the "ole-guard" design of traditional shooters...stop trying to be so DIFFERENT...
One is the POV that all weapons in this fantasy game should be matched to a real-life counterpart weapon, and immitate its performance and physics. Dust's SMG should be like the Karlov Precision IV smg made in Prussia between 1990-1994; the mass-driver should be modified to mirror the US thump-gun from Vietnam era, etc...
I'm not a military-buff (I know the names of many of today's and yesterday's war pieces, but that doesn't make me JACK, LOL). But my photography interest got me plugged into flight-based games alot, so I'm always drawn to "flying controls" and "aerodynamics" in lots of my games. That's the THIRD POV that flares up from time to time... "The flight-characteristics of the DS, and the ground-characteristics of the HAVs ought to comply with the Bell AH- Hawk and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle---CCP needs some advice about...."
...
I TRY not to get into the trap of wanting Dropships to "fly" and have things in the game comply with real-combat entities. PC and Playstation have made some pretty solid contibutions to "photo-realistic, militarily-faithful" combat games.... Eve Online and Dust 514 clearly appear to want to escape any relationships to Earth-race or Earth-tech (kinda the reason why for me it's a nice break from gritty Sturmovik and heavenly BoS). Trying to increase military-realism in a game with tiny maps and TONS of counter-technology going on... is going to burden the balancing act unnecessarily.
Perhaps as a result of its pioneering-track, "Balance" is more crucial to this game than ANY we may have typically play.
By the way, it's sort of a balance of "player behavior" that CCP is struggling to tweak, not really raw-clinical balance of the playing pieces. We're seeing this is REALLY hard to acheive, and I don't think it's necessarily doing it wrong if some of the weapons/vehicles they originally intended to be POWERFUL, have to be curbed down and twitched up until the way players USE them is controlled enough to have a fun game.
I want the gear, the personal protection technology, and the vehicles to be CONVINCING, not comical. That's true. But I don't think it's a good idea for Dust to be "combat-realistic" in the way some of us are wishing.