I'm NOT here to post about any crazy ideas just because I want it, but it's a little request which I believe is feasible but very useful to modders (and players?).

Seeing there's a firing range in the Playground, I was wondering if perhaps we could put non-moving dummy soldiers at the range? That way we can test the stopping power of each weapons, and how it decays over longer distances (could help new players see why you only use shotguns at close range, why assault rifle is decent for overall combat, etc.). Make the dummies contantly respawn to test maybe? Or maybe even better, use a script on a metal target and have an indicator whether the bullet you shot on target is fatal/non-fatal?

Modders can also rejoice if they can see how much they should tweak those kill_decay_start_time and kill_decay_end_time.

Above all else, if you think this is a bad idea you may remove it. Thank you

but you can not load mods
the idea is good, it would be excellent for testing , but it would need to be on a map where you could load the mods

_________________
Running with Codex
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2435

I fully agree with this suggestion and desperately want it to be implemented. Adjusting the finer details on weapons is an absolute pain without some kind of firing range.

_________________
I'M COOKIN' WITH GAS! I've got a handful of vertebrae and a headful of mad! Yeah! That's your spinal cord, baby! Dig it! Who's the man? I'm the man! I'm a bad man! How bad? Real bad! I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness!

You can insta-load overlays, and a specific map if needed, by launching RWR with command line parameters, e.g.
rwr_game.exe map=media/packages/vanilla/maps/lobby overlay=media/overlays/my_mod

There's a place in Steam too for adding command line parameters, if you prefer using it to launch RWR.

As for the main topic, while not really an absolute ideal solution, you could e.g. copy the lobby map and modify it to suit your needs better. You could make it spawn more friendly soldiers and disable friendly fire to use them as test targets.

It's also possible to reload weapon settings while the game is still running, to save some time with tests (not entirely sure how reliable this is currently, but we used it a lot at some point):
* create a file reload.txt in the game installation folder
* launch RWR in debug mode, with command line parameter debugmode
* edit reload.txt to include your target weapon filenames (filenames only, no paths) each on their own line
* make any change you need in the weapon file
* press F8 in game to reload all files listed in reload.txt

In addition to weapons, vehicles, materials, textures and meshes can be reloaded this way. It's also possible to reload the nearby area around the local player in the map (objects.svg) by pressing Ctrl-F8.