bazbake

That's nice. Just throw them in the pile next to the shotguns and pistols. Fact is, a lot more love has been given to multiplayer sniping in ARMA II's code than the other weapons. Presumably because Arma II's devs really love that style of gameplay. The fact that there are only two sniper rifles that aren't super awesome should be the least of your concerns. They're still really good.

I can't agree with this idea. The most obvious problem with hard loot caps is that it allows loot farmers and server hoppers to corner the market on loot. Loot isn't a reward for hard work, it's mostly a matter of luck (trust me, I've found two M107's in helicopter crashes and nothing in NWAF but AKMs, chemlights, and ammo for AS50's). Which is why players have begun telling luck to fuck itself and go from server to server rerolling on loot tables all day long. Keeping the loot is the hard work. By creating a system where it becomes literally impossible to find good loot by doing the exact same thing another player did a week earlier, you're punishing new players. And what if people with really good loot just decide to stop playing because they don't have a challenge anymore? Does their loot disappear from their inventory after a week? And what if all they did was go on vacation over the summer? Do you punish them for not devoting their entire life to a 30 dollar videogame? There needs to be an understanding that game economies are holistic. You can't just cut the flow off at one end and then resolve all of the issues. There are a lot of moving parts. Storage is the biggest immediate issue with a cap on loot tables. As long as tents and vehicle storage exist, people can farm for loot by server hopping on low-pop servers and then stash it and remove it permanently from the economies of servers they have never even visited until they choose to use it. For every hoarder with military gear there are 20-50 powerful weapons in their stash across multiple servers on the Hive that are not being used. Once duping goes away, you can probably lower that to 10-20 weapons. And about 80% of those weapons will never be used. By setting a hard cap across servers, people with nothing but free time who show up two weeks before a new player can destroy the possibility of that player ever seeing rare loot. If even 20% of the player base is hoarding, you can watch the entire loot tables completely collapse. Putting a hard cap on loot will only work if people aren't removing loot out of circulation. Otherwise, it will create a completely predictable false scarcity where the value of loot is overappreciated and a few powergamers become merchant kings by fucking the system over by building empires of shit. Also, they'll be the most over-prepared, heavily-armed people in the game so naturally they'll just continue to go on about their business coasting through the game riding a wave of loot hunting newbs down with one of several pairs of nightvision goggles or sniping you in the dark with their thermal optics. They'll be high tech reaver squads sweeping the apocalypse because they logged onto the game a week before someone else did. If you cap the loot tables, you have to throw out tents and vehicle storage or it won't be a sustainable solution. Actually, it will end up making the problem worse.

I really like this. And there's some precedent to this. When I've involuntarily disconnected due to lag/ping in the middle of a city or while being attacked, I've been booted to a previously saved position outside of the city. SImple and effective stopgap to solving server hopping.

This guy right here is right. Unless these skills are invisible and noone knows what skills they have, there will be tiers of players who specifically choose other players based on their stats. We act like we've never played multiplayer videogames before and have seen exactly how this all works. Rewarding long-lived players with increased skills and stats for surviving will create an entry tier barring new players from joining in with the game. Giving people increasing stats won't stop them from shooting YOU, they'll just discourage people from being shot. How will this slow down KoS? I'm still hazy on your ideas for preventing grinding, kpep... Okay, nevermind, you don't care.

Bandit skins are making a positive difference. They're not working perfectly, yet, but it's better than the system we had before. But seriously, stop shooting people.

Trading already exists. Fact is, it's a little too prevalent in a zombie apocalypse all things considered, thanks to tents ending permadeath and allowing you to keep a stockpile of loot without the risk of losing it upon dying, server hopping, and duping/hacking.

People keep stealing from your tent, which you use to ignore permadeath and pretend that this is COD? Please let you hide it better? Mhm.

-1.0062x10^6 Or -1,006,200 humanity.

Backpacks are cool. Fuck tents.

Just because people have started calling it the endgame does not mean you need to actually end the game. With 100 players you could easily secure every habitation on the map, wipe zombies off the face of the planet, and then it would be a game of civilization from the ground up.

@koze I think you're missing the distinction between nice and fair. It's completely fair for someone to repair vehicles (seriously, what do you need...scrap metal, a tire, a windshield, and engine parts...that's an hour or so of work) and then lose them in a week or less. It's not nice if it happens, but it's completely fair as long as everyone has the same opportunity to find and repair those vehicles later. I found a bike and a tractor in my first two hours of gameplay. And then I ditched the bike and blew up the tractor. This will never happen again because the next guy who found those vehicles put them in the debug forest a kilometer off the northern map and then decided never to use them again. Now new players will never even have the opportunity to find those vehicles while playing the game normally. It's not nice if it happens, but it's completely fair as long as everyone has the same opportunity to find and repair those vehicles later. So, I would still play DayZ if it happened. And presumably the OP would too. And we outnumber you two to one. :)

This game is pretty much boring unless you interact with other people in some way. It's more like Team Fortress than WoW, so gearing up doesn't matter in the long run. This is why people have made a game out of gearing up instead of surviving because surviving is hard and dying is even harder.

This is going to get long and it's going to involve a lot of math, but by the end of it I think it may change the nature of how the game works for the better and for everyone involved. I was thinking about people saying DayZ was getting too easy and there wasn't a challenge any more and I wanted to share some observations I've had. Particularly about the idea of the game being a "realistic" survival sim. And why it sort of isn't and how this makes it harder for new players to get around. So, basically, most of my observations come down to DayZ's reliance on VIDEOGAME PHYSICSTM based on VIDEOGAME LOGICTM. Weapon Mechanics DayZ is a realistic/hardcore post-apocalyptic survival simulator currently in development. However, when it comes to weapon performance, there's not much realism involved other than the iron sights. In your typical multiplayer FPS, playing for a certain period of time guarantees you better and better equipment. And if you die, it doesn't matter because your Loadout will remain with you. This has given modern gamers a "Level Up/Extra-Life" mindset where they expect to be able to find this idea of "the best gun in the game." But in real life guns don't work that way. Guns are compromises bound by the laws of physics. For the most part, DayZ is playing by CoD and Battlefield rules. The most advanced military-level weaponry is "the best" while all other weaponry is crap. In a game full of fleshy sacks of organs running around, this doesn't make much sense. I think it's time for Rocket and crew to recognize this and respond with a bit of an overhaul. Damage If you look at weapon damage charts, the damage hierarchy goes roughly as follows. Pistols/PDW/Bison/MP5 = Really, really weak. Makarov Rounds = Pretty weak. STANAG/AK/Crossbow = Decent. ACP rounds/AKM/Winchester/Hatchet = Better. Shotguns = Much Better/Pretty weak (buckshot at range) FN FAL/Sniper Rifles/M203HE = So much better. Lee Enfield = WHOA! M107 = WHAT THE HELL!!! AS50 = ...WTF!!!!!!! M136 Launcher = !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! According to VIDEOGAME LOGICTM, sniper rifles always do a ton of damage. Because if they didn't then people would run up to snipers in an usually small map and shoot them to death. So snipers were given finger of death in order to increase their survivability. But in the real world, bullet damage isn't decided by Word of God, it is caused by cavitation, which is the size of the hole a bullet leaves. Larger calibers traveling slowly leave more brutal cavitation than smaller calibers traveling quickly. Bigger and slower = MEANER. (Different "types" of bullets can alter cavitation and create fragmentation to increase trauma, but the basic physics are simple.) In short, bullet damage = penetration area * [trauma/velocity]. Since I am arguing that sniper rifles are overpowered and shotguns underpowered, how much base trauma a bullet does versus its velocity would only overemphasize my point, so I'll leave it out and save us some maths. (If you're curious look up Hydrostatic Trauma and Big Hole Theory.) Here's a chart of the cartridge sizes for the guns in DayZ: STANAG rounds (L85A2 AWS, M16 variations, M4 variations, M249), AK-74, ASK-74 = 5.56mm FN FAL, AKM, DMR, M14, M240, Mk48, Dragunov (+camo) = 7.62mm CZ550 = 7.8mm (it can chamber for 6.2mm, but I'll assume it's the deadlier version) Lee Enfield = 7.9mm Glock 17, Makarov PM, PDW, Bizon, MP5, M9 = 9mm M1911, Revolver = .45 caliber/11.5 mm M107, AS50 = .50 caliber/12.7mm 12 gauge Shotguns (Winchester? All other shotguns) = 12 gauge/18.53mm Notice how small the projectile is for most sniper rifles. When I get deeper into the physics of it, this will make a lot more sense. 12 Gauge Shotgun Slug = x(18.53)^2 = 343.3609x .50 caliber/12.7mm Rifle Damage = x(12.7)^2 = 161.29x .45/11.5mm damage = x(11.5)^2 = 132.25x 9mm = (9mm)^2x = 81x Lee Enfield 7.9mm = x(7.9mm)^2 = 62.41x CZ550 7.8mm = 60.84x 7.62mm = 58.0644x 5.56mm = 30.9136x On a side note, standard 00 buckshot is an average of 8 pellets, each 8.4 mm in tight grouping, or roughly 564.48x. Compare this damage table with the presumed damage table we started with and we have a contradiction between the current damage tables and expected damage based on physics. Now, if you like the current damage tables, please refrain from pointing out VIDEOGAME LOGICTM as a defense. What you'll find looking into the physics of firearms is that VIDEOGAME LOGICTM is actually self-defeating in this case since it ignores balance in the name of FPS traditions that were based on completely different gaming systems. Some real-world observations. The 5.56mm NATO (STANAG) round was designed for wounding, not killing. In fact, in real-world tests it lacks stopping power and its purported "yawing" ability, which allows it to pass at an angle to create larger wounds, only works if it hits center mass at close range. Otherwise it's a .22 LR round's baby brother. The nickname for the .45 ACP is literally the "Manstopper." Shotguns are messy. The AS50 can be upchambered to hold explosive rounds, but based on the game's ammo this is a standard .50 BMG round. In other words, big but not that big. So what does this all mean? Common sense says that there is probably some gun out there which is just complete overkill. But what I can reliably say is that "The Manstopper" can be reliably expected to incapacitate or kill a target in about 1-2 shots. Using that testimony and the 12,000 blood health system from the game, I put together a chart of prospective damage from each of the weapon classes. 12 Gauge Buckshot = 8 round simultaneous burst x 3000 damage 12 Gauge Shotguns = 15,500 AS50/M107 = 7,000 M1911/Revolver = 6,000 Other Pistols/PDW/MP5 = 3,500 Lee Enfield/CZ550 = 3,000 FN FAL/AKM/DMR/M14/M240/Mk48/Dragunov = 2500 AK/STANAG/M249/L85/M16/M4 = 1500 Hatchet=? (Actually, hatchet wounds are a doctor's worst nightmare...) Of course, all of this is dependent on hit location damage multipliers. It may very well be that a Lee Enfield shot to the head does end up killing the target. Who knows? So let's go into why a rifle would still be useful if the damage was nerfed back to realistic levels. And why people in the real world would use small-caliber projectiles for warfare. While we're talking bullets, Newton had a very good point (or three). Newton had three laws of motion. Law 1: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Gravity and drag affect bullet flight. A sniper rifle without bullet drop is a sniper rifle in outer space. Law 2: The acceleration of a body requires the exertion of a force that increases in relation to its mass. So, let's get into why someone would prefer to design a military rifle with a small caliber bullet. The force used in order to propel a projectile is F=ma. F is the amount of Force the propellant of the bullet must produce, m is the mass of the bullet, and a is the acceleration as the bullet goes from 0 to muzzle velocity. The larger the bullet, the greater the amount of force of the propellant you need to send it a certain distance. And propellants produce three things in addition to force: light, heat, and sound. The larger the bullet, the louder the crack of the gun, the greater the amount of heat, and the brighter the muzzle flash. The smaller the mass of the bullet, the less propellant you need to send the bullet a certain distance. This means smaller caliber rounds can be fired a greater distance while drawing less attention. Law 3: When two bodies act on each other, they produce equal action and reaction forces in opposite directions. Kickback is the amount of Force the propellant discharges into the gun and the shooter holding the gun, and it is equal to the amount of force pushing the bullet forward. Shotguns and large-caliber handguns have a very limited effective range, usually about 50-100m, and for good reason. A typical .45 caliber cartridge produces a force of ~400J and has a range of 50-75m. A typical .50 caliber BMG cartridge produces a force of ~13,500J and has a range of 1500m. And yet, the size of the hole the .50 caliber round leaves is only 22% larger. To put this in perspective, an equally-long 12 gauge round (18.53mm) with an effective range of 1500m would require a propellant force of ~29,000J. A typical soldier would be unable to even fire the gun safely. Now, here are the comparative propellant forces of three in-game sniper rifle cartridges. M16A4 (5.56x45mm NATO) = ~1700J Dragunov SVD (7.62x54mm) = ~3600J AS50 (.50 caliber BMG) = ~13,500J This is why sniper rifles use smaller calibers. In order to achieve their maximum effectiveness, they have to produce an incredible amount of force. But most of that force goes back into the gun. The same rule holds for burst and full auto weapons. An AK-47 with a 7.62mm round exerts a kickback of ~3600J with every round fired. The more rounds fired, the harder it is to keep the gun aimed at the target. Weapon handling decreases with the force of each subsequent shot. But if you can instead use a smaller-caliber assault weapon with a 5.56mm round, you can focus on tighter shot groupings instead of greater stopping power. Heat, Light, Sound, Zombies. Something else to keep in mind. Despite the muzzle break of an AS50, it's still exploding at 32 times the force of a .45 caliber round. Somehow the light and sound for these weapons should probably be increased so that zombies are attracted to them more quickly and aggressively. Currently only the sound of a gun ticks on my screen even though muzzle flashes from some of these guns are massive...and even then the sound is only about as loud as me running across the street. Shouldn't a gunshot attract zombies at least as quickly? If more powerful guns attracted more zombies from far away similar to flares, that would go a long way toward making zombies a bigger threat while causing snipers to hesitate before sniping the coast line as newspawns appear. If every shot pulled three or four zombies in a mad charge toward whoever fired it, that could mix things up. Also, it seems like the report for guns isn't loud enough. A sniper rifle should definitely reach past the outskirts of the city with a pistol reaching at least several blocks -- even when silenced. So, my point? This is how real-world physics and gun technology already provide weapon balance outside of the traditions of your typical FPS. Assault weapons and light machine guns should have less stopping power per bullet but a greater rate of fire. Heavier assault weapons should have twice the recoil but twice the stopping power. Shotguns should have the greatest stopping power by far but a short effective range. And handguns, despite having the smallest effective range, should be more powerful per round than assault rifles with very little recoil and with the added bonus of only taking up a secondary slot. As for sniper rifles, they shouldn't get to break the laws of physics just because typical FPSs let them. Greater damage = greater recoil = harder to handle. An AS50 or M107 should kick like a mule 4-8 times harder than the other sniper rifles while other sniper rifles should only maintain tight shot groupings with steady handling, accommodation for bullet drop, and patience instead of 1-hit body shots. And all guns should have to deal with the realities of being campfire bright and incredibly loud. Real silencers don't silence anything! They just make them less eardrum-shattering. (On a side note, while making rifles deafeningly loud in-game would be literally painful for players, maybe you can leave a ringing sound behind while the player recovers from the sound of their own rifle being fired if it's an AS50 or M107?)

So you wandered around. Found a vehicle. It had no keys in it but you took it and drove off. Then someone else wanders around. Finds a vehicle. It has no keys in it but they took it and drove off. But you want to stop the second guy from doing it because you really, really liked that vehicle. You're not supposed to keep it forever. That's why it always spawns in the same place. You take it, drive it around, get blown up by a tank trap or a tree or a well-placed sniper round, and then you start over. If someone is smart or fast enough to find your car and take it, good for them. It's not like there are a bunch of them just lying around. If you don't want to lose your vehicle, play the game nonstop forever. Otherwise, come to terms with the reality that success in this game was designed to be fleeting.

Most of the people polled on this forum would rather throw tents out completely than wait for the duping bug to get fixed. I doubt there's going to be much sympathy for someone who is afraid to play the game unless they have a tent full of stuff to go back to.

Another one of these? And another post by me saying, "Another one of these?" Whatever, have some beans.

Your skills do go up. It's called playing the game and getting better at it. Rewarding people for not dying by making it harder to kill them is kiiiiiiind of a one-way street toward mediocrity and boredom with regard to game content. The game won't get harder. It won't scale up. There won't magically be enemies that are harder to kill the longer you play. It's just a boost so that veteran players have an extra advantage against new players, which is the category of suggestions I find myself least likely to support. Seriously, this idea will just make it easier for veteran players to coast through content even more than they already do. While it will really, really suck if they play for a long time without dying and then die, it will consequently make it harder for them to die in the first place. The mindset that people are entitled to extra powers and strength and the ability to more easily dominate other players just for the fact that they have been around longer is one of the perspectives crippling this game's flexibility. If a single inch of leeway in that direction is given, players will exploit it to the point of breaking the game completely. Again.

The trick with stat balancing is that, at some point, you will encounter munchkins. And you have to be a bigger munchkin than the munchkins if you don't want them to break your game in about one day. You know those people who server hop to find the best loot because they're not satisfied just playing the game? Or the ones who figured out how to dupe 15 AS50's? Or the folks that figured out that tents could effectively cancel out permadeath? They'll exploit stats the exact same way as soon as you give them the opportunity and they'll claim it's exactly how the game was meant to be played until the Powers That Be go in and rip the guts out and change the code. This is why, eight years later, WoW is no doubt still nerfing hunters just because one person figured out a way to take a shitty build and make it ridiculously powerful. Safer to just make sure everyone starts off in an equally shitty situation and tell them to figure their way out of it. Then again, there are a pile of game-breaking issues with gear alone that they need to deal with before stats even come up for discussion.

@kozmo I see what you did there.

I once reached the step of a building that was one foot above the ground. You can't jump in this game and apparently any object higher than one foot requires you to vault (seriously?) so I pressed v. Stepped INTO the step in front of the building, broke both legs. Tried to bandage myself, but since I broke my legs while moving forward, got caught in a looping crawl animation that canceled any attempts at using a bandage by automatically forcing me to crawl forward in the middle. It wouldn't be so sad if it wasn't the third time the "breaking leg while moving" glitch hadn't killed me. But I never tried vaulting anything other than a fence ever again.

What you are experiencing is a combination of several factors. First, there's Online Disinhibition Effect, better known as GIFT or Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Essentially, if you give a normal person an audience and take away the ability to know who they are in real life, they'll turn into a total shitlord and forget the basic rules of common decency. Some argue that the opposite sometimes happens and the horrible people you see on the internet may actually be moderating their behavior since people aren't forced to interact with them -- in real life they may be much worse. Second, this gives rise to Trolls, who specifically enter debates on the internet to start arguments because they enjoy pissing people off. Not to be confused with "stealth parody," in which someone uses horrible arguments to defend a point no one agrees with in order to point out how bad those arguments are or how crappy the point made is, depending on the audience. It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference if you are prone to making horrible arguments or if you hold a point no one agrees with. So far you have a frothy cocktail of sociopathy. But wait, there's more... Third, you will eventually encounter the flame war as faceless people shout at, dismiss, or insult other faceless people because of the combination of trolls and fuckwads and people who are genuinely offended by all of the trolls and fuckwads. These are spontaneously combustible events where the initial flaming seems incredibly disproportionate to the amount of offense anyone could take. And usually, it is, as trolls escalate it on purpose and fuckwads just don't know what it's like to be a normal functioning human being. Eventually no one remembers who the fuckwads and the trolls are. So, good luck on your endeavors. I know I would love only constructive commentary on this forum, but that's a lot to ask for.

This is a two part series in two parts. In this first part, I offer for consideration an alternative system for calculating weapon damage that relies on modern ballistics science as documented by military medics and the scientific community instead of the myth which Martin L. Fackler, M.D. calls the "Kinetic Energy Fallacy." I believe that bullet damage could use some reevaluation so that we get real-world performance. It is hard to react authentically in a setting where guns don't do what they are supposed to do, so I went ahead and did some rough numbers using what I know of ballistic trauma to get more accurate comparisons between weapons. EDIT: Seems I wasn't clear enough. Bullets almost exclusively kill you by making holes through permanent cavitation. So damage should be tied to the size of the hole the bullet leaves in you. What follows is an explanation of why this is and some calculations to show what damage would be closer to authenticity. EDIT 2: TL;DR IN ADVANCE Arma II's weapon damage tables were made up off the top of someone's head and make no sense. According to this SCIENCE you can borrow, it should be based on wound channel size instead of kinetic energy or magic. Oh, look, MATHS and how I got them (--and pictures if you can't read--)! And fragmenting rounds are complicated. Fuck that for now. For starters... --Martin L. Fackler, M.D. So says one of the pioneers of ballistic gel. To elaborate... --Christina-Athanasia Alexandropoulou, Elias Panagiotopoulos -- Page 230 Shockwaves don't hurt, temporary cavitation almost never wounds, and permanent cavitation is what makes the big holes that kill people. And with contrary protests hopefully out of the way, the most accurate way to calculate weapon damage tables is to take bullet performance as measured by wound channels through the width of the human body at its widest, 35 centimeters, and figure out the volume of permanent cavitation instead of the current mistakes based on the "Kinetic Energy Fallacy." I took four representative calibers: 7.62mm NATO, 9mm NATO ball, 12 Gauge Shotgun Slug, and .45 ACP. All chosen because they represent the most drastic departures from expected stopping power in the Arma II Engine and because they were really easy. The numbers are approximate (wound tracks aren't perfectly smooth), and the blacked out area is where the wound channel exits the human body. The bullet doesn't matter once it leaves, so no point confusing yourself over it. Results 7.62mm NATO round = ~26ml. Although technically possessing a 7.8mm diameter, I'll stick with the negligibly smaller description because I don't care and you won't care when I'm done. Clearly the most complicated calculation. The 7.62mm round enters the body and tumbles at 16cm, then makes a wound track similar to a triangular prism in the shape of the bullet's profile with a height of 2.3 cm. The bullet exits the body before finishing its tumble creating an exit wound about twice the width of its entrance wound. To calculate this, I crafted a cylinder with a base the diameter of the bullet for the entry channel, a triangular prism with the height and base of the bullet for the tumbling channel, and a transitional volumetric shape (aka fucked up weird thing) using an average of the rough areas of the cylinder and prism times the length of the section of wound channel to connect them. By adding these volumes together you get an approximate volume of the wound channel. Note from the picture that I overestimate the wound channel volume in order to square the edges and allow for some inaccuracies in using an isosceles triangle instead of the oblong bullet shape. For convenience, I imposed the triangle on the shape of the bullet below to show the conformity. 9mm NATO ball = ~22ml. This was a simple calculation. Although the bullet yaws in the wound, it does so very briefly and at a less than 90 degree angle, so I noted it without attempting to calculate the small difference. .45 ACP(11.4mm) = ~36ml Also simple. Base area times height times length of wound track. A hole punched straight through. 12 Gauge Shotgun Shell = ~201ml Two cylinders for an easy approximation (although a segmented cone would also be useful, although not much different). One with a base diameter of 1.76cm until it rapidly expands at 4cm of depth to another with a diameter of 2.8 cm. Combining the two gives a pretty good idea of the wound channel's volume. EDIT: There's two big fat typos you will notice below...clearly in the first red box it should be 190.79 as listed previously. Also, the larger section of wound channel is clearly not 4cm. It's 31 cm. All other calculations are the same. So we see that 9mm ball ammo should do damage quite similar to tumbling 7.62mm NATO ammo. But non-deforming .45 ACP ammo should do damage about 44% higher than that. If 7.62mm NATO does 2200 damage, a Makarov PM or M9 should do ~2000 damage, Full Metal Jacketed .45 ACP ammo should do ~3200 damage, and a 12 Gauge Shotgun Slug should do ~17000 damage. Or a one-shot kill. Firearms to which this applies 7.62mm NATO (2200 damage): FN FAL, M14, M240, Mk48 Mod 0, DMR, M24 9mm NATO ball/9x18mm parabellum (2000 damage): G17, Makarov, M9, PDW, Bizon, MP5 Note: This changes dramatically if the 9mm ammo uses hollow points. .45 ACP (3200 damage): M1911, Revolver Note: This changes dramatically if the 9mm ammo uses hollow points. 12 Gauge Slug (17,000 damage): Remington, M1014, Double Barrel Shotgun This is, of course, assuming that the 7.62mm NATO round has realistically calculated damage already. If not, then you would have to scale these damage tables with it. Nonetheless, it's clear that the shotguns and pistols are currently underpowered compared to the 7.62mm NATO rounds when it comes to soft targets. Other Rounds Not Calculated I didn't address rounds that fragment, since that requires a different series of calculations for volume (and I'm not completely sure which ammo type is being used by which...NATO ammo is obvious. But for other tumbling rounds you can use the basic calculations for 7.62mm NATO ammo at up to 35cm to get a quick idea of how much damage they should do based on the degree of yaw and how long they pass sideways through the wound. 7.62mm x 39 (AKM) -- a slightly shorter yawing wound. http://www.firearmst...47 762x39mm.jpg Also, you have a vague idea of the performance of the AK-74 round. 5.45mm x 39 (AK-74) -- greater tumbling with 50% smaller wound channel. http://www.firearmst...K-74 545x39.jpg Anyway, there are bound to be some rough pieces there. I just wanted to offer an alternative look that uses realistic damage based on current ballistic trauma taken from the scientific community. Since some rare weapons will be depowered somewhat if this is implemented, loot spawns will probably have to be adjusted as well if something similar to this is implemented. On to part 2...

I've found two M107s in helicopter crashes and I soon dropped them. The scope is stronger than a pair of binoculars (for some fucked up reason). But the only purpose they serve is playerkilling when the other person can't see you. Perfect for bandits, shitty for high humanity players. Sniping with the M107/AS50 is really easy. Again, 5 times easier than any other sniper rifles. Do you really think it isn't? I wonder how you would snipe in any other game other than COD hardcore mode if you couldn't get a one-shot kill on someone's toe. You probably haven't played the Battlefield series... @Stworca You have to understand. Sniping with a rifle that has an 800 effective range and requires two shots or a headshot isn't the easiest thing in the world. So, of course, sniping with a sniper rifle that has a 1200 effective range and kills in one shot can't be all that easy. I mean, 1200 is a bigger number than 800, so that has to mean something. /sargasm

1. I don't know where you got your numbers from, but you seem to also be confused about the role of the US Army Sniper School -- members from any branch of the military can train there...which would be an odd mistake to make, since you say you attended. Anyway, there are less than 300 snipers in the Marines, and that's out of a size of about 180,000. Or 0.2% of the branch. Snipers are not common. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD23f5l99ag&feature=player_detailpage#t=107s (At 1:47) 2. Only if it's a Raufoss Mk211 round filled with tip-ignition RDX explosive compound. Or a grenade someone lied about. Just two examples of exaggerated stories about the terminal ballistic performance of a .50 caliber BMG round I've heard in my time. Back before the .50 caliber rifle became the gun of the week it was "The M2 can saw someone in half!" Now it's "One of those bullets can blow you in half!" Here's the wound channel for a Hornady .50 BMG A-Max bullet. That's not blowing anything off anybody that's not at least 8 inches thick. EDIT: At worst you can say a tumbling round might impact the pelvis or shoulder blade and bust a fat chunk of bone out when it flips through causing an exaggerated grievous injury. Or it might create savage deep tissue wounds if bone shards go flying out at a certain angle if it hits dense, brittle bone like a femoral diaphysis or something. Although I don't see that necessarily causing enough lacerations to leave a limb hanging, since the bone would be pushed out in the opposite direction instead of a sphere. Hypothetically, the bullet might go through 2 inches of concrete, start to tumble, and if someone had their back against the brick wall it could impact the shoulder bone, splinter that, and then send those shards flying outward and maybe leave a pretty big hole and kill someone giving the idea that it busts fat chunks through people. There are a lot of possible ways people can be tricked into thinking the .50 caliber leaves a giant hole. Although the easiest is just to blame it for something a bigger, deadlier, uglier weapon actually did like a grenade or an explosive-tipped round.

Anything that makes this game closer to World of Warcraft is something I don't want to see happen. That grind-heavy busywork stuff is the opposite of fun to some people (including me), and even then the only reason it was implemented in MMOs was to make people waste time so they didn't run through game content before their subscription renewal date came up.