Hmm... weapon models, eh?
Too bad editing GlobalLoad.txt was disabled. If that was still an option, you could convert the weapon geometry from the .s3d to the .eqg model format and gain the ability to use
normal maps to add some illusionary depth/contours to flat surfaces. Pretty easy to generate an okay normal map too -- would be a piece of cake for the people upscaling these textures.
Maybe someone could convince the devs to make a minor edit to GlobalLoad.txt, putting one of the xxxequip.eqg files above all the gequip.s3d ones, would be enough to allow selectively replacing .s3d models with .eqg ones.
Also, hope you guys are using DDS textures with baked-in mipmaps as the final format for these textures. My understanding is that the client does not do any dynamic mipmap generation at runtime, so any other format will start to look grainy or noisy as the weapon recedes into the distance (and may force the GPU to work a little harder in the process).