Imo the merc by contrast to the spy should get rather realistic eq. Discuss :)
Btw, I'm a shooter myself and I know a weapon engineer (working for the police in the ballistic department) and some youngsters at the military. So i could take care about everything related to guns 8)
What do you mean by realistic? I don't find the merc's guns to be all that unrealistic. About the only thing that kind of doesn't make sense is why the merc has a grenade launcher when he's supposed to be defending a site, but I can live with that.
Also as far as merc's visions go, realistically they'd probably just equip a merc with thermal and or night vision, but that would pretty much ruin the game, so lets not do that.
the aiming (and ballistics) are unrealistic
I don't think that's what we should be worrying about right now. But that's just me...
I'd like to keep it as it is. It's not supposed to be accurate in ballistics. Instant-hit is fine with me.