My idea was to have it customizable (for the weapons, at least) so you could specify what priority to pick weapons up in. Maybe a list like:
pgp,trracer,stingray=vm,spyder,carbine=autococker=automag
That would mean if you had a trracer and walked over a spyder, you'd auto-swap to the spyder, but if you had a carbine or autococker and walked over an automag, you'd have to drop it in order to pick up the automag, since they were equal on the priority list.
You could also do something like just
pgp
Then it wouldn't pick up any weapon, so you don't have to worry about inadvertently picking up a gun when you're PGPing.
I think an easier way of this priority system would be numbers. Each item has a number. The higher the number, the higher the priority. Items with the same number have the same priority. For example, if the Trracer has a priority level of two and the Autococker has a priority level of two, then they will have the same priority level and you'll need to drop the Trracer if you wanted to switch to the Autococker. Remember that he's/she's not being specific with what kind of equipment, so he's/she's generalizing the word equipment. This feature can also be easily turned off. There should be two radio buttons, one that says "turn on priority feature" and one that says "turn off priority feature". When the feature is turned off, the PGP will have a priority level of one and the rest of the weapons will have a priority level of two. "No hopper" will have a priority level of one and the rest of the hoppers will have a priority level of two. Same thing with the rest of the equipment. For equipment that is optional to have like hoppers. You don't need to have a hopper. So items that people don't need to have will have an item called "no hopper", "no barrel", "no CO2", etc. People that want challenging gameplay can set "no hopper" to have a priority level of 2 and the rest of the hoppers to have a priority level of 1. Same thing with the rest of them. However, paintball markers can't have an item called "no marker" because you can't get rid of your PGP. When someone installs the game for the first time then the priority system will assume that the person is a noob and will set the priority levels with low end items having a low priority and high end items having a high priority. The person can change this when ever he/she wants. I think features that can easily be turned off and on should automatically be implemented into the game. For those who don't want it can turn it off and those who do want it (like me) can turn it on.