Land Squid

1a/b: Once again it isn't game logic if something actually exists in real life and you're straying back into the opinion/conflation trap. 2: You don't need a full shop to make modifications. Of the previous modifications I listed only trimming material off the BCG would require an actual machine. Buffer spring: Stretch it out by hand and trim a few coils off with a pair of wire snips. Buffer: Use a hammer and punch to drive out the roll pin and dump out the reciprocating weights. Gas block replacement: Use a hammer and punch to remove old gas block and replace. Gas system/barrel replacement: Same as above but also use wrench to remove barrel nut and swap barrels. Gas port: Use a hand chuck with drill bit to open up the gas port in the barrel. (Note: While I would prefer a drill press, with care it is entirely feasible to do this with manual tools.) Hammer spring: Bend and/or trim legs with wire snip. 3: Watch the video a few more times. If it wasn't functioning reliably the cyclic rate wouldn't be steady and uninterrupted. It would be erratic in timing, sluggish, and show evidence of short-stroking/being under gassed. 4: Again stating what other players will or wont do is your opinion and has no actual bearing on what actions they will or would like to take. 5: No. And just off the top of my head is a wonderful Russian round: 9x39mm.

1: So you have zero actual experience with these systems but feel confident enough in your lack of knowledge to make sweeping judgements about what is "realistic" or not. 2: You're conflating your opinion with mechanical reality and are attempting to impose it on others. If one desires to eliminate as much of the sound signature as possible then modified ammunition is a necessity. That it is accompanied by a set of drawbacks is the simple reality of getting the sound signature to that minimal state. 3: That other people, obviously including you, do not understand all of the problems, and benefits, that are inherent to subsonic 5.56mm being fired in an unmodified gas system is not "video game logic." The proper term for that is ignorance. Video game logic would dictate that it behaves in a specious and assumptive manner without regard to fact, a concept which has most obviously gone out the window with the last couple pages worth of commentary about the real world dynamics of this sort of technology. 4: So what if it doesn't cycle? We already know it will do that. The rifle becomes what is known in firearms parlance as a straight pull bolt action. Then again if any sort of gunsmithing gets added in that could easily be correct by, oh I don't know: replacing the buffer spring with one of less weight, reducing the buffer weight, milling the bolt carrier group of excess material, switching from a carbine length gas system to a pistol length system and possibly reaming the gas port to a larger diameter. Oh, and even if the rounds are only as powerful as a makarov... IT WILL STILL KILL YOU! You want video game logic? How about trying to argue the point that "well X is less powerful than Y when it replaces Z so it shouldn't be included..." when it doesn't freaking matter how powerful X, Y, or Z is, because all three will still kill you. ETA: Oh hey, 10 seconds on google and what do I find? Subsonic 5.56mm that will reliably cycle an unmodified M4 action. (Video at link.) http://www.ebr-inc.net/556Subsonic.html And other ammo made intentionally to not cycle. For the uninitiated, the only difference between these two is the bullet weight, and choice/amount of propellant used. http://www.ebr-inc.net/556UltraStealthMatchSubsonic.html

Electroplating is fairly complicated compared to the usual method of bullet production, which is swaging and annealing. Copper jackets are cold formed (swaged) and then annealed as necessary resoften the metal (copper and brass work harden, so you need to anneal it between some steps to keep it from splitting). Once you have the jackets you just press in the lead core and do any final forming such as the ogive if it is a base forward formed jacket. Another alternative is to make cast lead bullets and crimp on a gas check. Gas checks are small copper cups attached to the base of the bullet that keep the hot gases from eroding the base of the bullet, or cutting around/through one side of the bullet which would result in severe lead deposits in the barrel (this happens primarily when you try to push the velocity of cast lead above a certain point.) One easy source for crude gas checks would be to cut up old soda cans and use a circular punch to stamp out discs of aluminum, and then use a punch and cup to stamp them into shape. Finally, a century old tech to improve simple cast lead bullets is ye olde paper patch. Doesn't get much more field expedient than that as it was being actively practiced on the American frontier in the 1870's. Some helpful videos on the personal manufacture of bullets and the use of cast lead in a modern rifle cartridge. For a full cycle of field expedient player made ammunition components I'd suggest the following: Bullets: made from cast lead that can be recovered from numerous places, large batteries, wheel weights, old piping, et. Bullet gas checks or jackets (necessary for higher velocity rifle cartridges): can be made from copper tubing, spent .22LR cases, aluminum soda cans, etc. Black powder propellant: made from charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate (salt peter) each of which can be easily obtained or made. Primer: Again the cups can be recycled old primers or stamped out similar to the gas checks, only smaller. Actual compound to load them would be fulminate of mercury (mercury itself obtained from things such as old thermostat switches) which has been made since the year 1800. Casing: Reused old casings. I'd suggest there be a chance of loss of a portion of the cases during resizing unless annealed first. Cases work harden from the action of being fired. An unannealed case could be expected to last 4-5 reloading cycles while annealed cases have lasted 20+ times.

I think you're misinterpreting the use of the word "premium" here. He's talking about carefully manufactured ammunition that is held to careful tolerances and thus produces superior consistency and accuracy. The more common term for this is "match" ammunition, as in good enough to be used in competition shooting, or matches.

Have you ever, you know, actually shot a suppressed firearm with both super and subsonic ammunition?

Edit: Nevermind, someone posted the same vid before me while I was elsewhere.

An absolutely fair point. Best chance in obtaining them would be hand loading them yourself. Second to that would be gun stores with a comprehensive ammunition inventory and a distant third would be the armories of specwar type commands.

That you are turning an M4 into a straight pull bolt action firing the equivalent of a .22WMR is neither here nor there. It, will, still, kill, you! Would anyone of you care to volunteer to be shot with a 77gr. .224" caliber projectile moving at 1,100 FPS? ETA: Okay, maybe I'm being a bit too much of a dick. Yes you have the above problems. The benefit is the lack of supersonic crack (so you don't rile up the cannibal natives) and you have the added benefit of not needing to pack an entire additional weapon system. You'll be giving up weapon range, and penetrative power (you can forgot about punching through helmets and ballistic vests) but with just a change of ammo and you now have a highly covert weapon for picking off those pesky obstructions to your looting, aka zeds. Or the particularly unaware survivor. *shrug*

And it will still kill you.

I can post videos of 5.56mm ammo, but this one does the best to show the difference between supersonic and subsonic ammo being shot back-to-back.

Already been reported (repeatedly) on the bug ticket system.

Namely it's infinitesimally small carrying capacity. While I get the concept of a limited inventory this thing just so far outside the bounds of logic as to completely prevent any suspension of disbelief. For those who have handled the British assault vest you'll note that the model shows 6 large magazine pouches, and it's actual cargo capacity is 2x4 inventory slots. This amounts to a grand total of four magazines for the M4. Four. The reason I find this particularly absurd is that any one of those pouches in the object's character model would be able to hold that. A vest like that should be able to hold at least a dozen magazines, plus a few miscellaneous items. For what it's worth, one of the pouches on my personally owned vest could hold six magazines on it's own. The size to storage discrepancy really is that large in this case. Now, rather than just pump up the inventory space my suggesting is to treat it in the same manner that First Aid kits and ammo boxes are. Make what is stored inside that vest restricted, specifically in this case to magazines and pistols. With that done a 4(6*)x10 or 4(6*)x12 inventory size for the load bearing vest would seem to be appropriate, allowing up to 10-12 magazines, or a few less if your also wish to store your pistol in your vest (a not uncommon practice). *Only if the following on magazines is also taken into consideration. Magazine sizing is also currently a bit off regarding relative sizing to other objects and each other, so these are my suggestions for a change up regarding them. These currently refer to the M4 mags only. 10rd - is actually what I'd call correct, 1x1. 20rd - also correct at 1x2. 30rd - should be bumped up to 1x3 40rd - should be bumped up to 1x4. This would make it obnoxious to use, even in the adjusted load bearing vest, but the size of this magazine is an odd one out being generally too long for most magazine pouches on the commercial market. 60rd (jungle clipped magazines) - should be bumped up to 2x3. It's two magazines strapped side by side. They don't magically get smaller to match the width of a single 30 rounder, and being able to fire all 60 rounds without having to swap between the two mags is advantage enough already. Ideally I think the inventory system needs a general overhaul regarding space, mainly to account for more variance in differently shaped and sized objects, but I'll save that for a different posting.

What about dividing the current inventory slots down further, so 1 current slot = 4 new (smaller) slots? This would probably allow greater variation in item sizes without needing to completely overhaul the current system.

Hmm, regarding depth of objects. With a 2d plane you only get to set an object's height and width, but objects are 3d. The solution I came up with was setting their "width" in game based on the object's circumference. Thoughts?

Great points with the modularity of load bearing equipments. Molle and Alice is pretty much world wide standards now, but even going back to the most basic of load bearing gear, the belt. You start with a heavy duty belt. That's nice. Probably helps keep your pants up when running from the zombies. Now you add a holster to the belt. Pistol needs some mags, so now you add some magazine pouches to it. Be nice to carry some snacks so you add a small butt pack. Hmm the belt is getting kind of obnoxious now what with the added weight, tends to slow you down, so you add some suspenders to it, and voila, you have a load bearing ensemble. Belts or vests, some are hard stitched and can't be changed, such as a fly fishing or camera man's vest. But more and more the police and military gear allows for modularity and customization. Attachments really only limited to the available "real-estate" on the belts and vests. The only practical limitation for you as a person is the weight you're willing to bear, so remember, pack mule you ain't, and you might just need to be able to run from the zombies.

Bullets don't knock you down. If a person falls down it's generally from being shocked or startled at being shot. If a bullet had enough energy to push someone over it'd also have enough energy to knock over the guy who shot it. Equal and opposite reactions and all that, Sir Newton was a real buzzkill man. As to helmets, the ones in game, ACH's, will stop grenade fragments, point blank shots from a pistol, and glancing rifle rounds. They are roughly the equivalent to NIJ level IIIA. No, we don't. We learned well from those few morons in Mogadishu who did. You Fins really should stop doing that, even if it's only in training. (American military here, '02-'08.) And no the ceramic plates aren't destroyed after 2-4 shots from a 7.62x39mm. Citation.

So a quick thanks to AshleyP for inspiring some thoughts in another thread. Batteries: In short, different types, disposable versus rechargeable and means of utilizing the same. I'm keeping this idea currently focused to a player's personal gear and not presently including stuff like using car batteries as part of base building or restoring vehicles. Using different batteries types and needing multiple batteries for particular devices adds a layer of difficulty to the game ostensibly should help to prevent excessive proliferation and indefinite use of "elite" gear and the like. Battery types: D cell - fairly obvious for the starter flashlight or larger electronic devices, such as some radios and the like. AA cell - a somewhat universal battery type, found in a wide variety of electronic devices. For the purpose of this game lets say GPS, some NVG's, and some weapon optics. CR123A cell - a rarer battery type that has found wide use in high performance electronics, especially in tactical or weapon lights, some weapon optics, and NVG's. Disposable versus rechargeable: By and large due to the differing chemistry between the types rechargeable batteries tend to have less "juice" (mAh's) and thus run out faster. To compensate for this, they can be reused multiple times. The idea here is for players to be able to recharge the batteries using various means, be it tapping into still functional power grid such as at lamp posts, thanks AshleyP, or by setting up a small solar charger. The limitation to this sort of thing would be battery condition. As batteries are continually recharged they are degraded (a modern NiMH rechargeable battery can give you about a thousand cycles of drain and charge but still has a very definite life span). As a battery's condition degrades so does it's available fully charged capacity. At "ruined" status the capacity would be zero, and thus you'd need to discard it and find a replacement. Disposable batteries would start with a certain amount of charge and condition. Once expended toss it away. Disposable batteries would be quite a bit more common than rechargeables. Just throwing out some numbers here to give a general impression of how I'm thinking battery capacity would work in relation to item condition... The different cells would have different maximum capacities. Disposables: D cell 8000mAh, AA cell 2200mAh, CR123A 1500mAh. Rechargeables would be half that capacity (yes I know the numbers vary a bit, trying to simplify this down for the game though). These values represent 100% charge with pristine condition. If the condition is degraded, these values are adjusted accordingly. Good condition as an example being a 0.9 multiplier. A good condition disposable D cell with 100% charge would only have 7200mAh available for consumption in your electronic device. A rechargeable D cell would 4000x0.9=3600mAh at full charge. Condition multipliers: Pristine 1.0 Good 0.9 Fair 0.75 Worn 0.5 Damaged 0.25 Badly Damaged 0.1 Ruined 0.0 Short of some sort of external damaging factor (such as bleeding all over your batteries and ruining them), battery condition is static for disposables, and rechargeables would only experience degradation when recharged. Different electronics would consume mAh at different rates, and also require different numbers of batteries to function. The classic PVS-7 NVG's from dayz mod as an example would require 2 AA batteries to function while the M68 CCO optic would only need one. GPS: Just a quick idea I had regarding the usefulness of certain electronics in a post-apocalyptic world. Obviously many of the satellites are going to go spinning along merrily for quite some time before failing. Others may go sooner due to lack of human intervention in the usual maintenance and housekeeping functions (such as making sure a satellite doesn't drift too far out of it's assigned orbit without some sort of correction or keeping clocks synchronized). So, the idea for GPS satellites is "blind periods." The GPS and GLONASS (Russian GPS) systems each consist of 24 individual satellites. As those birds fail and/or fall out of the sky that will open up blind spots in the satellite constellation. Periods of time when your GPS receiver will not be able to tell you where you are. As these occurrences are dictated by the orbits of the satellites they are not "random" in the true sense of the word, but are predictable periods through-out the day. During these periods your GPS receiver in game would either return a null response, giving you no coordinates if it can't pick up enough satellite signals to triangulate its position, or during other periods give you incorrect readings, showing you perhaps a few coordinates farther north/south/east/west than where you really are. Incorrect readings would be the result of a lack of housekeeping of the satellites, as their clocks and positional data must be kept current otherwise the positional signals they transmit will begin to "drift". NVG: Again limiting the usefulness and thus tamping down the "OP'ness" of the object. Since I've already covered it in another thread I'm going to be lazy and just copypasta it here. If it seems disjointed it's because I'm copying from three different posts of mine. Most I2 tubes limit field of view to a 40 degree cone. For someone playing the game with a 4:3 ratio screen giving them an approximately 90 degree FOV, when using NVG's the outer 1/4 of the screen on the left and right (and a little less above and below) should be obstructed. For a real world demonstration, try cutting a toilet paper tube in half, and then peering through it. Gives an idea of the restricted FOV when using NVG's. ...regarding the limitation of NVG's in the game. With the addition of item condition there is a new aspect that can be exploited to limit their "usefullness." I'm sure you guys have tried out the ACOG's and other optics in the game and seen how badly obscured the field of view is with the broken lenses. The same is sure to be true with the NVG's. So even if you maintain the same "rarity" that they had in vanila DayZ Mod, the fact that a goodly percentage of them are going to be "damaged" or "badly damaged" is going to hamper their utility dramatically as in addition to the limited FOV to start with, the remaining FOV is going to be further obscured to the point where you are trying to look at the world through a straw. Also a rather pedantic thought occurred to me about repairing NVG's. Say you do manage to get a few sets of broken NVG's together and piece together a reasonably good condition set. If you don't clean and purge them correctly (flushing the air and dust out of the inside of the optic with a zero moisture medium such as pure nitrogen) you'll end up with fogging, debris spotting and other performance degrading issues or possibly even tube damage, despite having perfectly intact lenses. IMO I think it'd be pretty cool if the (very rare) NVG's in the game were more varied, some being weapon mounted, some being hand-held (used like binoculars and such so while you could walk with them you'd be moving very slowly), and then of course the helmet or head harness mounted. Additional thought: Make the head-mounted NVG's only work when in first person view.

Killjoy. Actually, got a link? I like it!

And that'll be part of the difficulty of depending on the GPS. If it's returning no coordinate result you'll know it isn't working. The rest of the time it might be working just fine, but can you really trust it? Perhaps the errors aren't enough to be a major problem for basic foot navigation, perhaps they are. You pays your moneys and you takes your chances. By and large, yes, they do handle most of the relatavistic calculations on their own but these things still need "tweaking" or housekeeping be it in their clocks, or their orbits, to keep errors from growing in the system unchecked. As a minor aside I was working in a facility during a leap second event. Basically we had to manually add a second to the clocks governing the servers and satellite uplinks in order to keep them consistent with the rotation of the earth (which is slowing). It's one of those really obscure things that most people would never think about or have to deal with ever in their entire lives, but if not taken care by some unnamed technician somewhere would allow problems to slowly develop in the automated systems. And in the zombie apocalypse, all those unnamed technicians are gone. :P

You don't have to work out the complex math for orbital patterns for the game. It's enough to simulate by just having a rolling blackout/error schedule spanning say a week. ie. Monday - 0513-0835 no service, 0915-0952 +-1 to 5 randomly selected to X and Y coordinates.... Tuesday - 0237-0414 have it flicker between correct and incorrect coordinates.... .... As for the orbit of the satellites, in this case yes they actually do. One of the characteristic problems with most satellites is magnetic and atmospheric drag is constantly eating away at them. It's slow, and takes a while, but it's there. (Also would be holding their orientation as the reaction wheels saturate and not having someone tell them to execute a desaturation manuever, or not being able to due to a lack of thruster fuel.) Case in point is to look at the repeated orbital boosts needed by MIR and the ISS in order to stay in the sky. In the zombie apocalypse your GPS sats will all be in different stages of orbital management. Some are going to be closer to drifting out of alignment than others. Some of their clocks will have been synched up more recently than others (this sort of management is needed because of relativity, the satellites are moving substantially faster than you are on the ground and also in a lower gravity environment and so "lose" a few microseconds per day (Citation. :P and correction, not milliseconds), etc. This will result in different satellites producing positioning errors or failing earlier than others and thus producing the erratic service I described above. As for the NVG's I'm going to dig around some for pictures of tube damage and the like, but if you get a chance in game pick up a damaged ACOG and peer through it. While the FOV is the same as the unbroken ACOG the picture is harshly obscured by broken lenses. There's no need to play with the FOV after it is initially set to 40 degrees for NVG's, you can simply limit the visibility further by adding those broken lens effects, dead spots, etc. to the image. For people with large FOV's set, yes, a lot of their screen is going to be blanked out. But that is one of the huge drawbacks to the technology. Image intensifier tubes only allow a very narrow viewing angle (as stated, forty degrees). This is huge reduction of your natural nearly 180 degree FOV that you have in real life. Attempts to alleviate this problem are currently VERY bulky, heavy, and expensive. Example, GPNVG-18 And even with all that you still only have true depth perception for the center 40 degree viewing angle. Unfortunately depth perception is something a little beyond our means to simulate in a game otherwise that would prove another problem for people using NVG's. It is actually absurdly difficult to do something as simple as walk around in an open field at night with only a 40deg FOV and no depth perception without LOTS of practice.

The singe greatest impediment to proliferation right now is the simple fact that bodies disappear before they can be looted. In regards to gear destruction I've already noted that hostile players have taken to aiming expressly for the legs now in order to avoid destroying the backpack/vest contents. With that in mind once bodies are made to be persistent I don't think the gear destruction is going to prove a significant impediment to looting of higher tier gear from murdered players

I attribute a lot of this simply due to lack of wider world exposure/experience for the average person. Most people simply don't get the opportunity to go out and see more of the world than their own little locality and that results in a very centrist concept of the world and foreign cultures/capabilities. I try to help by sharing my experiences when-ever possible. And in that vein, I'd like to hear about what sort of NV tech you guys got to mess with. Only foreign systems I really have much experience with are the Zeiss Orion 80/L and the 1PN34, and even those are just in passing. IMO I think it'd be pretty cool if the (very rare) NVG's in the game were more varied, some being weapon mounted, some being hand-held (used like binoculars and such so while you could walk with them you'd be moving very slowly), and then of course the helmet or head harness mounted. Additional thought: Make the head-mounted NVG's only work when in first person view.

During the Cold War the militaries of both sides were big on using proprietary batteries so that "the enemy couldn't use captured gear." This has largely gone away along with the cold war. Just going by memory I seem to recall that the PVS-5's were the last fielded personal night vision system to exclusively use the proprietary battery. This was later remedied in the private market with a replacement battery cover that allowed the use of standard CR123A 3 volt lithium camera batteries (this type of battery became very popular with the introduction of high performance small tactical flashlights, ala Surefire). The PVS-7's were built from the factory to take either the older (being phased out) proprietary battery, or 2 AA's. The PVS-14's on the market now can be had in 2 AA (older discontinued design), 1 AA (now most common), or 1 CR123A formats. ETA: My PVS-2 had an adapter that allowed the use of 4 AA's in place of a special proprietary 7.5 volt military battery (BA-3100/U) and the PVS-4 had an adapter that allowed the use of 2 AA's in place of a different special proprietary 3 volt military battery (BA-5567A/U). By and large the private market either finds a way around such problems, or the military asks for it themselves. The PVS-2 was an example of private market adaptation, and the PVS-4 adapter was done as the request of the military. Probably more than you wanted or needed to know on the subject. :P Just a thought regarding the limitation of NVG's in the game. With the addition of item condition there is a new aspect that can be exploited to limit their "usefullness." I'm sure you guys have tried out the ACOG's and other optics in the game and seen how badly obscured the field of view is with the broken lenses. The same is sure to be true with the NVG's. So even if you maintain the same "rarity" that they had in vanila DayZ Mod, the fact that a goodly percentage of them are going to be "damaged" or "badly damaged" is going to hamper their utility dramatically as in addition to the limited FOV to start with, the remaining FOV is going to be further obscured to the point where you are trying to look at the world through a straw. Also a rather pedantic thought occurred to me about repairing NVG's. Say you do manage to get a few sets of broken NVG's together and piece together a reasonably good condition set. If you don't clean and purge them correctly (flushing the air and dust out of the inside of the optic with a zero moisture medium such as pure nitrogen) you'll end up with fogging, debris spotting and other performance degrading issues or possibly even tube damage, despite having perfectly intact lenses.

Here's a link for those of you curious what non-american night vision systems look like and how well they function. http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_18/294665_.html

The biggest difference between mil first gen (American PVS-2, Soviet 1PN34, etc.) and civilian first gen is that the military tubes were cascaded. As in, they were actually three tubes stacked one after another. My PVS-2 produced a gain comparable to gen 3, the downside was all the other first gen problems plus the fact that it was 6 lbs an the size of a thermos. Civilian tubes with only a single amplification stage require substantial active illumination in near infrared to produce useable results. Power consumption in general isn't a major concern for passive amplification systems (ie. you're not needing to use an IR flood light like with the single stage first gen systems), the PVS-2 was a few hundred hours of run time, the PVS-7D with 2 AA's was 120 hours, and the PVS-14 with a single AA is 50 hours. I2 systems sip battery power compared to most every other system used for seeing in the dark, be is a flashlight, or thermal. The boot recruit was using them when standing night watch on a ship in the middle of the Red Sea during a war deployment. Kind of alters the parameters a bit. ;) The top notch stuff that is starting to proliferate out now would be systems like the PSQ-20. It's a hybrid night vision and thermal optic system. Now that thing does eat batteries like candy. The NVG half has the same run time as the PVS-14 I detailed above. The thermal side however will consume 4 AA's in 7 hours. Other new stuff would be the quad eye, which is one of the current attempts to alleviate the narrow field of view problem. And that leads into my last bit for this posting, as another guy mentioned, the restricted field of view... Most I2 tubes limit field of view to a 40 degree cone. For someone playing the game with a 4:3 ratio screen giving them an approximately 90 degree FOV, when using NVG's the outer 1/4 of the screen on the left and right (and a little less above and below) should be obstructed. For a real world demonstration, try cutting a toilet paper tube in half, and then peering through it. Gives an idea of the restricted FOV when using NVG's.