On Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 5:57:36 PM UTC-4, wrote:
I'm neither a software nor mechanical engineer, but I think the relationship between force and deflection might be linear, not exponential

Yeah, was thinking energy, ie. stored energy that's going to come back also.
With a linear-ish shock absorber, the energy dissipated is linear.

With a bungee/spring alone relying on a weak(er) link, not much happens until you get very close to the breaking condition. With linear energy dissipation you can tune the release condition much better, and you won't have the springback effect.