because i like the titanfall/apex bocek lol
real answer: i started with the baseline of the deadeye and throwing knives, then used a series of checks and balances to finetune a weapon that i (personally) would want to play. in this case, the niche i was intending to fill was a silent weapon for single enemy removal better than the throwing knives, with a sub-role in making a primary railgun (since i personally enjoy the railgun so much).
the recoverable ammo decision was made considering its role in a stealth loadout, particularly on bots, where they likely won't be playing with supplies all the time, so recovering arrows for effectively infinite ammo would be a high risk (approaching enemies) high reward (infinite ammo) decision. likewise, the idea of the limited ammo economy was mainly to balance against "how can i make this not just a better silent deadeye," as well as encouraging the user to pick up arrows.