Modifying ammunition

[aksuduud 64]

Ammunition modifying, for example drilling a hole in a bullet and placing a primer there, modifying powder loads or cutting a cross on it to attempt to improvise a hollow point and whatnot, "cut" shotgun shells and such, could make for an interesting gameplay mechanic. Obviously knifing a bullet is not an answer to lifes troubles, so i think that any pros or cons that would come from modifying ammunition should be undocumented and if possible not reverse engineerable from the game files, so that it would be left for experimentation on the user and legends on metagame.

Modified ammunition would pretty obviously be harmful for the firearm though, and increase the rate of degradation if its implemented in standalone.

And i didnt even search, come at me

[Skat3rat 1633]

I actually haven't seen any suggestions like this before. I'm not saying someone hasn't already suggested it, but this is a much more original idea.

But honestly I can't see that much importance of being able to modify bullets. Yeah it would be a neat little thing to have in the game but imo it's not that important of one.

[BwobBwub 660]

This was good, modifying ammo adds variety on how to kill people.

[-Gews- 7443]

I'm gonna go with "no", people don't tend to do this in real life... primer in a bullet? X-shaped dum dums? Naw, too silly.

On a side note, the French came up with some interesting loads for street-fighting in WWII. For example, one simply had the tip of the spitzer cut off to make a large flat-point (meplat) instead. Another had the tip thinned out like, if I remember right, a screwdriver blade so that the rear of the bullet would tumble violently.

I don't think anyone with two brain cells to rub together would waste valuable time modifying bullets in real life. It's actually pretty hard to cut into jacketed rounds.

[falcon2500 14]

Would be a cool element ahah I like that, but I think it would be hard to implement. And who care if no one do this in real life, atleast, it's fun. And if they don't add this, I hope they will add ammunition quality, different types of bullet, quickly because it's cool as hell XD.

Pardon me If I made some mistakes, english is not my first language. Have a nice day :).

[Slugfoot 73]

I'd go with cutting shotgun cartridges to turn them into slug rounds. It only takes a minute to do.

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

Would be cool if there was a gun shop somewhere that you could go to and use their equipment. Maybe even salvage a generator and some gas to power the stuff up for a while.

[Draco122 412]

I'd go with cutting shotgun cartridges to turn them into slug rounds. It only takes a minute to do.

And as shown in the video, really only worth while with breech loading shotguns ie the double barrel. Would give another good reason for using the Double barrel.

I feel it's a great idea, fits well within the crafting mechanic of the standalone, and if people have the time and resource I don't think they'd hesitate to make something more deadly if it kills quicker than the bog standard.

Positives remain in higher damage output by modifying conventional target and small game hunting loads for shotguns ie birdshot. The negatives of course is severe lack of range and little effect to modern body armor (they were shooting a target at 25 yards), as well limiting its overall effectiveness when used with repeating firearms such as pump actions or semi-autos, leaving double barrel and other breech loaders the main weapons it can be used with.

I'm gonna go with "no", people don't tend to do this in real life... primer in a bullet? X-shaped dum dums? Naw, too silly.

On a side note, the French came up with some interesting loads for street-fighting in WWII. For example, one simply had the tip of the spitzer cut off to make a large flat-point (meplat) instead. Another had the tip thinned out like, if I remember right, a screwdriver blade so that the rear of the bullet would tumble violently.

I don't think anyone with two brain cells to rub together would waste valuable time modifying bullets in real life. It's actually pretty hard to cut into jacketed rounds.

Modifying ammunition to suit a purpose in a dire situation or to offer high probability of a kill is not as "silly" as you think. Gangs in LA have frequently made "Dum-Dum" bullets to better kill targets and victims, as well as gaining an infamous reputation as "Cop killer ammo".

The British even had the term dum-dum refer to modified .303 British ammo for use in India, before the hague convention and even more so the term was later expanded to the expanding bullet aka, Hollow Point or Soft Point. I could see modified ammo being used when more conventional ammunition which provides far better results are just not available or extremely rare.

Here's some examples:

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot32.htm (Box o truth on Dum-Dum bullets)

(a youtube playlist where a guy shows off a variety of home-made or improvised shotgun shells, you'd be amazed just how much damage some of these things can do)

I wouldn't rule out modified bullets entirely, Rocket has mentioned in interviews, if people know how to do it and it's capable in the crafting system, they should be able to make modified rounds.

[-Gews- 7443]

Modifying ammunition to suit a purpose in a dire situation or to offer high probability of a kill is not as "silly" as you think. Gangs in LA have frequently made "Dum-Dum" bullets to better kill targets and victims, as well as gaining an infamous reputation as "Cop killer ammo".

The British even had the term dum-dum refer to modified .303 British ammo for use in India, before the hague convention and even more so the term was later expanded to the expanding bullet aka, Hollow Point or Soft Point. I could see modified ammo being used when more conventional ammunition which provides far better results are just not available or extremely rare.

It is pretty silly IMO, I haven't heard of LA gangs doing that and if so I would suspect it is extremely uncommon. The only specific (non-AP) ammunition I know of that gained a large reputation as a "cop killer" in the media was Winchester's Black Talon with a special coating and "fangs" on the ends of the hollow-point lips.

The British soldiers didn't modify their .303 rounds, it was official issued ammunition. There were also "Manstopper" hollow point rounds produced commercially for revolvers in the late 1800s.

As for the "Box of Truth", I've seen that before and it is mildly interesting, but the modified ammunition proved fairly ineffective with some failing to do anything different at all, and their test was optimistic (in human targets even purpose-designed hollow points frequently fail to expand since humans wear clothing and contain bones and muscle fibre).

Would anyone actually pull rifle bullets and reload them backwards? Not I, because they would have a large chance of failing to feed in semi-automatic firearms, and the ballistics of a reversed bullet would be godawful and would severely reduce accuracy and effective range.

With ALL hunting ammunition these days being of the expanding type, and with hollow points being commonly available for handguns, I don't see anyone going to these lengths, even if they were just stuck with ball ammo. As has been said many times before, .45 won its reputation as a "manstopper" in FMJ form, and the man-killing power of a FMJ bullet out of a rifle is certainly adequate. With rounds like the 5.56 it's not even necessary to try to modify them as they already are designed to fragment.

Sawing into bullets is almost unheard of and for good reason...

[-Gews- 7443]

Another thing I forgot to mention (which is not a criticism of the OP):

Let's say we introduce expanding hunting ammo for certain rifles, or hollow-points for handguns... how do we decide how much more damage is appropriate? If all the ammunition is plain ball ammo, it's a lot easier to choose damages that are in line with one another since most of the ammunition will react similarly. If we introduce expanding ammunition it's all up in the air - how much more "damage" does a JHP or soft-nose do? 1.5x? 2x? Is there a chance it doesn't expand? Does high-velocity rifle ammunition do a lot more and handgun ammunition only a bit more? A topic for debate...

Edited March 23, 2013 by Gews

[Slugfoot 73]

And as shown in the video, really only worth while with breech loading shotguns ie the double barrel. Would give another good reason for using the Double barrel.

<snip>

I understand that if they are cut with small 'tabs' on each side instead of just one side then they won't bend and will cycle through a pump action no problem.

As an afterthought; - Wouldn't it just be just as good to be able to modify the cartridge loads...? Coins, washers, solid slug (made from molten shot), less-lethal stuff like wax, wooden dowel, etc. - All it really entails is opening the end, emptying the load out, replacing it with whatever you want and then closing it again.

This way you could have a choice of range, lethality and spread, etc.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Excepted pretty much all these loads are inferior to the original, the only two i would 'qualify" are the wax slug and the cut shotgun shells (within reason) because they are poor man's slugs, they are what you would realisticly use if you wanted a stock of slugs and had none.

[jman 8]

As long as doing this incorrectly turns your gun into a hand grenade why not?

[rpatto92@hotmail.com 26]

Nice idea: I really like the thought that there's a structure to the game that determines the outcome of certain actions based on a solid algorithmic cause and affect system but at the same time kept from view of the players; to be figured out via trial and error.

[djzombie 22]

Good idea,

would be cool if we could find/build a reloading bench, maybe have it be gunsmith specialization or something.

I think the only difference between sd rounds and regular rounds is the amount of gunpowder in the round, sd rounds have less to avoid damage to the silencer, thus a reduced range. So with a reloading bench and tools it would be easy to turn regular rounds into sd rounds.

Would also be cool if we pick up empty shell casings, maybe in bunches of 5 or 10(or the entire pile) to avoid tedium, then be able to take scrap metal, melt it down using a forge you can build out of basic materials(bricks, scrap metal, concrete), place into molds(maybe full metal jacket(armor penetration) and hollow points(extreme damage to soft targets) for advanced gunsmiths) for bullets, then combine the empty shell cases, the proper amount of gunpowder(for regular high range round, or sd low range round), and the newly molded bullet to reload your own custom ammo.

Would be cool if there was a gun shop somewhere that you could go to and use their equipment. Maybe even salvage a generator and some gas to power the stuff up for a while.

That would really be the exact place you would go to find all this equipment, would be awesome if you could strip the machinery that is there for working parts and then reassemble back at camp when you had everything you needed.

Edited April 1, 2013 by djzombie