Making weapons

I''ve been having some trouble trying to figure out how to do my weapons sub-system. My dilemma right now is figuring how to build offensive systems for both vehicles as well as infantry. My game takes place in the not too distant future (but more than a 100 years), but weapons technology has not significantly advanced too much. In essence, I''ve boiled weapons down into several categories, but I''m not sure how to fit it all together. Here''s my weapon breakdown as follows: Trajectory: Direct fire- attack is launched directly at target Indirect fire- attack doesn''t fly in a straight line Both Targeting: Line of Sight- target is lined up in sights, round flies in straight line Guided- projectile is corrected in flight to better hit target Homing- a guided projectile is actively guided to the target, whereas a homing weapon is passively guided) Observed- indirect fire is often observed, and then corrected Weapon Delivery System Kinetic- a round is delivered through kinetic energy to impact target Energy- weapon fires a non-material form of energy to deal out damage Pressurized- weapon uses a substance which is released via pressure (flamethrower). Kinetic weapons so far are subclassed (though I''m not sure if I''m going to do this inheritance-wise or use aggregation with sub-objects to create this effect) into: Chemically propelled- old-fashioned primer charge or modern binary propellant reactions used to accelerate a projectile Magnetic- projectile accelerated via magnetic rails along the barrel Self-Propelled- rockets or jet based projectiles which provide their own flight characteristics Energy Weapons so far only come in two types: Lasers- detonation lasers using chemical charges to generate the energy output and optical systems to amplify the photonic discharge Plasma- Shells of liquid hydrogen are superheated via a laser in amagnetic chamber until it turns to plasma, and is ejected via magnetic rails to the target. I think the first step is to ask what kind of Weapon Delivery System the weapon is. From this, the components necessary to create the rest of the weapon are determined. For example, let''s say you want to create a Direct fire, Kinetic weapon that is chemically based. Now that you know it is a kinetic weapon, you know that all kinetic weapons have the following parts in common: Receiver- Where the firing chamber is Barrel- the part of the weapon that guides the projectile (not always in self-propelled weapons) And every Receiver is composed of: FeedSystem- how the projectile is loaded into the chamber Magazine- a device that holds the ammunition It took me a long long time to figure out that the characteristics that we think of for a weapon...it''s damage, penetration, maximum range, accuracy and attentuation, are actually dependent on the type of ammunition loaded in the weapon. And the kind of ammunition that a weapon can use is in turn dependant on the barrel and the receiver of the weapon. For example, you have to know what size ammo fits in the Receiver and Barrel, and the Receiver determines how much energy can be imparted to the ammo (or in the case of railguns, determines the capacitor charge used to accelerate the round down the barrel). So now I have to figure out how to design the ammunition as well. But I''m still trying to figure out exactly how I should design the weapon subsystems for each classification of weapons....Trajectory, Targeting, Weapon Delivery System, and Weapon Type. Should I go the inheritance route? Or try to extract the common information and put them into sub-objects which are contained within the subsystems? I want my system to be as configurable as possible. I thought I''d use the aggregation route...but the problem with that is that each kind of weapon subsystem classification has game rules associated with it. For example, Direct fire and Indirect fire weapons have different rules for combat. Guided and Homing weapons also have different rules. Even the kind of damage a weapon does is dependant on the type of damage the weapon does (is it a pure kinetic weapon like an APFSDS round or does it use a shape charge like a HEAT round?). Doing a class inheritance may make it easier, but it may also stifle the ease of adding new weapon types, because game rules will also have to change. On the other hand, if I don''t make stipulations for differences between weapons, then some of the flavor of different weapon types gets lost.