Dabs
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The bicycle is the only vehicle that is less likely to kill you than just going foot. Try to make a troll face whenever you hear a bullet fly by. SD ammo can be used in non-SD weapons, and will make them inaudible to zombies and reduce the range at which players can hear you fire it to less than 200m.
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It Sounds Like It's Not Even About Zombies
Dabs replied to FanboyHunter's topic in New Player Discussion
The people saying the game isn't about zombies are the ones who have tent farms manufactur-duping equipment 24/7 and only ever sit on the sniper hill above electro trying to get their kill count as high as possible. Zombies can sneak up on you. Can walk and hit through walls and closed doors. One single hit may break a bone at 12000 blood, rendering you unable to run. If you then shoot, you merely attract more zombies. If you bandage & inject morphine, chances are you will be below 9000 blood by the time you're done. Any hit that ends with you having less than 9000 blood may knock you unconscious. In which case the Zeds will just start eating you alive. And probably break a bone again right after you applied your last morphine. If you don't alt-F4, you may well die, no matter your gear. Those saying Zombies aren't dangerous are the ones playing Call of Duty: Elektrovadosk, spending 90% of their time on Sniper hill or between their duping camp and sniper hill, Alt-F4ing the instant a player or a Zed notices them. The Zeds will murder you and not give a crap about your equipment if you don't watch out. Just because the Zeds can be somewhat managed doesn't mean they're not dangerous. You can trust everyone to shoot you on sight if you don't talk to them, and you can trust everyone to backstab you if you aren't on the same mumble server as they are. There is no PVP endgame. There is no endgame at all. It's just survival for another day. -
Best weapon to go with a sniper rifle?
Dabs replied to OwnexD's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Here's a pro tip: Just use a PDW with a few MP5SD magazines. With the SD ammo, it is inaudible to players past 200m, and completely inaudible to zombies for any practical purpose. With the PDW you can clear the zombies on the way to your location without any players hearing it that wouldn't also hear the sound of dying zombies, and you don't need to overload your backpack with eleventy guns that you will likely never use. The PDW on full auto is also powerful enough to kill players in close quarters if you get the jump, and if you don't have the jump, no gun will save you at distances where it's too close for the sniper rifles. As an aside, ditch the AS50 and use the DMR for both day & night missions. Saves you time having to run to the camp just because it's getting late. And get backup. Having a spotter (ideally with a thermal sighted L85) is the difference between a sniper and someone who forgot to take his medication and goes to a clock tower with a rifle. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Spare me your ignorance. It is interesting how your entire knowledge is clearly from video games, yet want to forbid people who own and have fired high energy rifles from speaking out. This has to epitomize the hypocrisy and stupidity in this discussion.To set the record straight: In the unlikely case of a .50 BMG striking not just the arm, but also the bone, a tourniquet is the way to go. The arm's likely gone of course. You may survive without any special equipment even, just applying pressure with your (still attached hand). And even without any intervention whatsoever, survivability is higher than if the arm had been removed with a blade: Bullets cause considerable blunt force trauma to the tissue surrounding the wound canal, and the the artery would swell almost immediately shut, well before a lethal amount of blood loss had occurred. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Yes they are the exact same thing. A "Ballistic Tip™" bullet is a Nosler Trademark on an expanding hollow point bullet where the hollow point is plugged with a plastic plug to increase aerodynamics and thus accuracy. There's other brands that do something similiar, and the terminal ballistics are indistinguishable from unplugged HP. Army snipers don't hand load, that's something for hobbyists wanting to save money on their hunting ammo. The canadian army snipers that did that record in afghanistan had special match ammo (regular FMJ with tighter tolerances) and found that at distances over 2000m the regular BMG ammo was more accurate as it was loaded hotter, and their record 2400something meters shot was performed with a BMG round. Guns do not have knockdown power. What they do have is the ability to damage a vital organ (heart, spine, brain) to disable an opponent within seconds. No, .308 HP ammo is king because it allows you to do that with great accuracy at ranges of 500m. Hunters carefully line up their shots on an immobile target and will not fire until they are fairly sure they're going to hit the heart cavity. And they will tell you that if you do not hit that, you not only have failed as a good hunter, but you can now look for the deer that you injured, which ran off, and finish it off.Bigger rounds with a bigger bore and more energy give you more leeway for near misses - bone and bullet fragments cause additional damage in the immediate vicinity of the wound channel, so a near miss to the heart with a .308 can still damage it and/or the arteries enough for it to die within seconds. Deforming ammunition tries to further capitalize on this. A gut wound however will have the deer run around for 100s of meters, maybe hours, before it collapses. A .50 cal isn't a magical death ray. It's holes are slightly bigger, but it's still of utmost important where that hole is, what organs exactly you made holes in. I am still in favor of a more detailed, more realistic medical simulation. None of that is an argument why a particular type of gun should be a magical death ray however. Cube-Square law. Things do not just scale up. Oh, I'm all for more variety with bullets. For example, AK47/74 hollow point ammo would be easily available in Chernarus, as modified single shot AKs with a scope are a popular, cheap choice for hunters in the eastern bloc. A 9mm makarov at 300m carries enough energy to penetrate the skull and damage the brain. It can wreck someone in 1 shot. A hit to an extremity with a .50 cal may or may not destroy that extremity, depending on whether bone was it. A grazing hit with a .50 cal would do virtually nothing except give a cool looking scar. So what's this with the 1 shot wreckage? It's important where you hit? Right.For extra emphasis, here's the top 3 things of what's really important whether a gun will "wreck" someone: SHOT PLACEMENT! SHOT PLACEMENT! SHOT PLACEMENT! -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
"Ballistic Tip" and "Hollow Point" are the exact same thing. Look it up. One is a brand name, one is a generic term. Also, look up what Hand-Loaded means while you're at it - The .50 cal V-Max isn't available as a cartridge, only as a bullet for hand-loading. Disagree. The relevant mechanic is "Disabling a target", not "killing a target". A loss in blood pressure can incapacitate people. So can a crowbar to the head. A gut wound does not incapacitate people, i.e. does not keep them from killing you a couple times over. Blood bags are almost an entirely out-of-combat affair due to the logistics and time they require to apply. They're an acceptable break from reality, because you do not want to spend a week ingame recuperating from your hemorrhagic shock. Nor an AK74 torso hit, nor a makarov torso hit. So should we make all guns instakill by that logic? Go away. That's varmint hunting (You know, 1ft, 3lb rabbits and gophers) with a 30-30. A massively oversized projectile for the application. My bad, the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare, not the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, no military would be caught dead with "war crime ammo". I could list more reasons why the suggestion you could get HP .50cal ammo in even pre-Zombie peacetime Chernarus is beyond retarded. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Someone firing at you from 100+ meters with a pistol or an SMG chambered in a pistol round should have an effect? Why would you want to be this unrealistic? That is why armies use rifles and not pistols: Rifles have range enough to kill everything you can see. Pistols do not. Firing at a guy armed with an AR from 100+m with a pistol is suicide. I do not agree that there needs to be any change here. That is again better solved a) by better aim and B) via more realistic wound ballistics. As it is in the game, shooting someones leg off only has an effect when he's running (in which case he's stuck in the dropping to the ground animation for a second) Please take note that according to the hunter, the deer was hit in the stomach, and ran for 100 yards, and expelled the stomach while running before crashing. Also: Yuk! Also: Those guys fired hand-loaded hollowpoint ammo - Hollowpoint ammunition is indeed outlawed by the geneva conventions and by rights would never be found near military bases, and in fact, would only be in the hands of a handful of enthusiasts in the USA (read: crazy people who want to hunt deer with an anti-tank rifle). A regular FMJ/AP bullet would have caused much less spectacular wounds due to the bullets inability to shed off its energy while traversing a body.That just proves the point again: Shot placement. Even a 50 cal HOLLOWPOINT didn't kill the buck immediately, because nothing vital was hit. It was the tremendous blood loss that got the buck. Hunters are supposed to aim for the heart - The buck may jump, but not live long enough to get further than spitting distance. In game terms, the buck was hit in the stomach, losing blood at a huge rate more as its heart began to accelerate, ran for 100 yards, passed out when it went below 4000 blood and just bled to death while unconscious. An aside: I would appreciate if guns did less instant blood removal damage, but instead did wounds of various sizes. Currently it seems all wounds make you lose blood at the same, low rate, and it is mainly the instant magical blood removal effect that kills people. That is not realistic. Blood in the game should be blood pressure really - Which is why IRL you can give people saline, salt water, and to a degree it works just as fine as blood to treat hemorrhagic shock (the stuff you get from not having enough blood), often producing fewer issues, as saline is hypoallergenic and doesn't care about blood types, while a bag of O- blood is not. (I'm assuming the game's blood bags are all O- blood, as thats the only type that can be given to everyone) Also, saline does not need cooling. What this all means is that a badly placed shot from a 50 cal will not kill you immediately. Not even with hollowpoint ammo. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Your numbers are off. With 5 rounds in a mag and scope, it's ~15kg in a 1.4m long, bulky package. Oh, I am not saying an AS50 should make people walk. That was you alone. I'm saying, carrying an AS50 should mean you carry little else. But as it is currently in the game, the AS50 and the MP5 have an almost identical profile in how much they hinder you overall. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
I think that is a terrible idea. Suppressing fire works exactly by making the affected people do something other than shoot back. I just watched a video on suppression in BF3 and it seems to work by rendering your BF3-Hitscan weapon more inaccurate as bullets impact near you. That is crap.In DayZ, people who have unexpectedly bullets flying around them will generally hit the deck (a poor decision in case the fire is coming from more than 100m away, due to the way foliage works) or run for cover. Both are realistic reactions. At nighttime, a nearby muzzle flash blinds you. N0earby impacts fill your screen with flying debris (I think dust should be more emphasized by the engine though - Hitting concrete causes an impressive amount of dust for example, but typically not enough to impair breathing or visual indoors) One problem of the engine is that you can fairly accurately pinpoint a shooter by sound. In reality, sounds are reflected by foliage, buildings, landscape, and it is much harder to pinpoint where a gunshot is coming from. With less accurate sound location, the inclination to hit/stay in cover may be increased over the reflex to just shoot back. If you're providing "Suppressing fire" and the guy just shoots you right back, maybe you should have just killed the guy instead. Obviously there was a clear LOS. Army doctrine states that suppressing fire is provided by at least 2x the defending party's people. So if you're trying "Suppressing fire" as a lone guy vs 3 dudes in a barn, you don't need to wonder that you get shot instead. If those 3 dudes in a barn get every opening of the barn covered by the suppressing fire of a total of 6 attackers (as per military doctrine), so that another 3 may actually advance (as per military doctrine) you would have had different results, I can assure you. I've provided supressing fire in the game and found it effective enough to be considered realistic. (read: made snipers log out when their general bushy vicinity was covered with bullets) The real problem is people not valuing their character's lives, throwing them away in pointless PVP battles, since they can just respawn and grab their corpse or check their duping tents or one of the abundant assault rifles and only lose a bit of time. If players could be made to actually value their character's lives, it would make the game as a whole much more compelling, more realistic, and more entertaining all at the same time. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Because of sass to the CO. Edit: I was also wearing full chem warfare gear + gas mask. 5 cans of beans - 2.5kg 2 litres of water - 2kg 2 pints of blood - 1kg (uncooled? are you mad, bro?) AK74, 2 mags, + 60 rounds, ~4.5kg Total: 10kg. Are you %&&*ç% kidding me? Have you ever even worn a backpack? Typical field pack weight of a marching foot soldier: 30-40kg. 10kg of which are going to e ammo alone (about ~400 rounds 7.62mm NATO, or ~800 rounds of 5.56mm) and I've been carrying that. It's cumbersome, and your jog isn't going to be very fast, but that's a far cry from "unable to move" The problem with a weight system is that people are built differently. The 163cm/55kg (5'4/9 stone) girl will likely pass out after walking for 1km with 30kg of equipment, while the 195cm/105kg (6'4/16 stone) steroid munching dude will not only be carrying his own pack, but also the woman, and her pack, and jog for 10km while at it. I could imagine that during character generation there could be a slider that decides your build, weight, size, and thus carrying weight, and reducing recoil with heavier weapons. Conversely, a smaller build gives you more options to stay concealed, allows you to move more quietly, and makes you harder to hit, and makes you need less food to travel and regain blood. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
So is a car, or an AK-74. Your point being? VBS2 was designed to provide the USMC with, well, a virtual battlespace. 2. To conduct exercises and perform exercise planning. Arma is just VBS2 with a single-player campaign. My point being: It's not a game. It is a simulation. Your argument is invalid. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
Don't think so. Think of it as an EMT simulation, where instead of "apply all-purpose band-aid" you need to apply pressure to shot arteries and so forth. There isn't enough software that can potentially teach you basic first aid. In a zombie apocalypse scenario, field surgery is realistic. That is realistic, but in a game, it can be easily hand-waved. Like a broken bone can be fixed with morphine. Magical/futurisitc nanobot-based cures. For a "shooty" game, only immediately disabling injuries are relevant. An untreated gut wound can take a day or more to kill you, but that is not relevant to the shooter. To the shooter, relevant is only whether the target is disabled or not. So there is no gameplay-relevant need to simulate gut wounds in detail and such, nor is there a need to keep magical gut-repairing pills out of the game.Wounds to hands and arms are very frequent, as in a firefight they're often exposed and/or in front of the center of mass. However, even with a 50 cal, you need to hit bone to reliably disable use of an arm. Aiming for an arm hoping to disable the shooter's ability to hold a gun is not smart. Hits to guns themselves occur frequently as well and may render it inoperable - or barely scratch it. It's important to simulate the erratic nature of gunshot wounds. One bullet aimed at the vicinity of the heart may drop a tango like a sack of rice. Another may hit the ribcage at a slightly lower angle, get deflected, and end up doing no real damage at all. This is why taking a dive works sometimes in real life, and this is also why you make sure dead guys better stay dead. All of this should also make clear why buckshot (what shotguns fire) is so lethal in real life - The sheer number and spread of pellets ensure a high probability that at least some vital organ was perforated, disabling or killing the victim. No one wants an "Agony simulator" where you lie in a bed for weeks on end. You don't need a simulator for that. You can lie in bed just fine without any expensive software to simulate the experience for you. In a MilSim, having good first aid mechanics is definitely a plus, maybe up to simulating field surgery (for something like DayZ), and handwave the more long term effects with phlebotinum (like morphine) for gameplay purposes. No need to simulate those ever. The players - the human beings behind the in game characters - already suffer from their own psychological problems, react in erratic and plain stupid ways to unexpected simulation. A sniper that would carefully one shot kill people at 700ms, but misses an immobile target at 100ms when he's suddenly under fire due to panic and such. In the army, I personally carried 6 assault rifles in a backpack on an occasion and two more on me. Those had folding stocks, but I didn't fold them - You just don't need to have the whole barrel in, just the center of mass. The problem is the weight. Weight slows you down, makes you less agile, tips you off balance, makes you more exhausted more quickly. And weight distribution also matters - A 1.3m rifle weighting 15kg renders you immobile more than a 13.6cm diameter ball of lead weighting the same. Yes, I just calculated that. I'm a nerd like that. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
One more thing: It doesn't matter how "rare" a gun is. Hackers will have it, and others will farm until they have it, and others again will take it off the first two people. Any weapon that is as grossly overpowered will thus be used in significant quantities and be a nuisance to everyone. -
.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.
Dabs replied to bazbake's topic in DayZ Mod General Discussion
OP is absolutely right. What separates DayZ from "Zombie Games" like Left4Dead is the fact that it is not a game, but a simulation. ArmA2 is not a game, it is a simulation. Simulations are not games, although you can play with both of them, the goal is inherently different: A Simulation tries to model reality, or in the case of ficticious scenarios, create verisimilitude - Something that may be real. This is also the reason for the success of the DayZ mod, it is much more compelling exactly due to its realism. Video Game Logic dictates that strapping a scope to a rifle automagically makes it 40 times more deadly. In reality, a scope allows a marksman to acquire a target past the 300-500m that are the limits of unaugmented iron sights. An M16's 5.56mm bullet is deadly out to 800 meters, an M14's is deadly out to 1600m, .50 cal bullets are deadly out to 3000m. Deadly here means, the bullet will penetrate enough still to strike the heart or penetrate the skull if the shot is placed correctly: It can strike a vital organ and thus cause incapacitation and death A bullet striking the heart has fatal results - the upper half of the heart is essentially a hollow body that will explode if struck by a bullet. The lower third or so is muscle tissue and damage to it is not always fatal. Any damage to the brain can be debilitating, although many people have survived being shot in the head as large parts of the brain do not deal with functions that are vital for survival, those are essentially focused in the brain stem. Other parts of the brain being destroyed by a bullet frequently cause visual loss hearing loss, loss of language, fine motor functions, loss of appreciation for high art and philosophy depending on what part of the brain was destroyed. Many head wounds can cause quick incapacitation and death through damage to the carotid arteries. A high or medium powered bullet striking bone will typically shatter the bone. Low powered bullets (such as from pistols) typically lack the energy to shatter the thick bones of extremities, but as arteries typically go along the bones in extremities, can in theory can still cause massive blood loss and loss of limb, but typically do not do so as the arteries are located on the inner side of the bone whereas bullets typically strike the outside. At ranges below 100m, the relatively soft-jacketed M855 (5.56mm) round, when fired from an M16, typically shatters when it strikes flesh, causing high-velocity shrapnel to spray into the body, causing tremendous, shotgun-like damage, able to damage the heart and arteries when harder bullets such 7.62mm NATO and .50BMG pencil through. The 7.62mm NATO round only fragments when it hits bone, but a hit to the ribcage suffices to cause this, producing small entry wounds and terrifying exit wounds. Russian 7.62x39 and 5.45x39 rounds act similiarly, often merely tumbling in a target, which is nowadays considered a rather inefficient wounding mechanism (The 5.56mm NATO's wound profile is superior at ranges below 100m) Now to the typical .50 BMG M2 round: It is designed to fly 1000m, go through half an inch of armor steel or a brick wall, and still be deadly* to the target behind it. It is an armor-piercing round. And this is also its problem: The casing of the typical .50BMG round is too thick for the round to fragment even when hitting bone. The .50 BMG will just go through everything, and leave unspectactular wound channels. If the bullet does not directly strike a vital organ (heart & arteries, brain stem) it may not even disable the target. *Deadly here again means: It *can* strike a vital organ and thus *can* cause incapacitation and death This relative inefficiency is why the M2 round is only used when the ammo price is low. It is still, by a wide margin, the most frequently used round, as it is cheap and capable of killing men and destroying machines at huge ranges. When performance is more important than price, machine guns typically use a mix of incendiary and explosive rounds. This is one of the advantages of the .50 cal cartridge - Due to its huge size, it can deliver incendiary zirconium powder, tungsten penetrators and high explosives. A .50 cal sniper rifle can fire all of these rounds, but typically fires M2 ball rounds or match rounds, optimized for accuracy and consistent performance. The machine guns's payload is not optimized for accuracy, in fact, a certain amount of spread is sometimes considered desireable. In DayZ, it's possible to assume that the M107 rounds are match/ball rounds, and the AS50 rounds are penetrator/incendiary rounds. Neither of the two are significantly more effective vs unarmored human targets than 7.62mm NATO at distances below 1000m. Wound channels do not equal blood loss, as the surrounding tissue quickly swells up (the effect of the temporary cavity) That means that at distances below 100m, realistically, a 5.56mm round is more deadly against unprotected targets than a 7.62mm or .50 cal round, as you are more likely to damage a vital organ with a torso shot. This is why all the armies in the world have transitioned to using 5-6mm rounds: They're just as deadly as bigger calibers at ranges that matter: most wartime KIAs occur at distances below 30m, and 300m is often described as the limit a rifleman can reliably hit human targets. The advantages of .308 and .50 cal consist of range and armor penetration, not sheer killing power at <100m. Now on to hitpoint-based systems with guns doing different amounts of damage. As I've tried to establish before, holes in people per se do nothing, what you need, are holes in vital organs, to take someone down. A shot liver may cause death within half an hour or not. A shot kidney may cause you to lose that kidney (you got two) or make you die from internal bleeding within minutes. Terminal ballistics are highly erratic and unpredictable, especially with lightweight bullets that change their trajectory dramatically once they hit flesh. This is why one shot to the heart does not kill you in video games - They currently simply do not track all the organs and their functions and whether they're hit by an erratic bullet's path or not. Video game designers went to art school, not med school. However, this renders an important aspect of real life shooting useless: Shot placement is paramount. This is the point that really needs to be driven home. Shoot someone in the foot 10 times with whatever gun you like - you're only going to manage to destroy that foot, not kill the guy. You can kill someone with a .22LR if you hit just the right spot. Someone may survive multiple hits by a .50cal because none of the bullets have struck anything vital. The hit point system balances this out: If you hit someone this and this many times, chances are you would have hit a vital organ, and he goes down. And to simulate the effect of shot placement, a headshot is deadly. This is a gross oversimplification, but unless we can have a proper, medical-level simulation of organ functions and blood pressure, the effects of adrenaline and blood loss, this as good as it gets. Counter-Strike, released in 1999, was the first game to really do that, and did it mostly right. Still, it abandoned "Head shots as proxy for good shot placement, and death by body shots as proxy for statistically probable fatal torso hit" with it's one hit killing railgun, the AWP. That gun was a terrible idea that did not fit the mechanics for these reasons. Yet in CS, it was at least somewhat balanced by the reduced running speed to make the unwieldyness of the weapon part of the game mechanics. At this point I would like to take note: CS poineered this system 13 years ago. It's time to move on and start simulating organs. And in DayZ, it's just the same thing. It is merely video game convention to have one overpowered one-hit-kill sniper rifle when all other weapons require multiple shots to the torso, in absence of good shot placement. Yet the completely impractical .50 cals do not even impart a movement penalty. In a realistic zombie apocalypse, a .50 cal is pretty much the worst weapon you could be running around with: You can barely carry any ammo for it, and its weight and unwieldiness make it a liability instead of an asset. tl;dr: When your hitpoint-based game mechanics dictate that head shots are almost certainly instantly lethal, while you require multiple hits to the body to kill someone, one-body-hit-kill weapons are both unbalanced and unrealistic. Just because you're using a .50 cal doesn't mean you don't need to hit a vital organ to kill someone. Firing 10 times into someone's foot destroys that foot, but will not kill him, regardless of caliber. An aside: It is important to understand that when using this system, guns generally have to be fairly close together in hitpoint-removing performance. If you hit someone with a 9mm in the torso 5 times, chances are you destroyed a vital organ. Not 15 times. 9mm is good like that, it has good penetration. .45 not so much, having a reputation for being deflected by car windows, car doors and so forth. A second aside: Subsonic 5.56mm rounds have an absolutely pathetic wounding profile - worse than any handgun in the game. Yet in the game, they do the same damage as their full speed equivalents who have 10x the energy.