My Observations On Various Firearms

[Abaddon_GC 2]

Hello all, over my time playing DayZ, going over the stats of various firearms as well as using them in-game, I thought I might as well make a thread pointing out some things that aren't exactly realistic. I understand this is a game, before anyone feels the need to point that out :P but I've heard and read the devs speak about how their aim is to build the most realistic world possible, so here we are.

Most of these will likely be rather lengthy, as I will supply as much real world evidence to support my claims as I can. If you disagree, or would like to add anything, I'd love to hear everyone's input and as long as you keep it civil I have no issue with dissenting opinion. I'm trying to come at this from a purely objective standpoint and if I'm incorrect, I'll do my best to acknowledge that. Please keep in mind, if I suggest a nerf to a gun you like or something like that, it's only to make the firearms in-game as close in appearance, function, and effectiveness as their real life counterparts as possible, for better or worse.

These are in no particular order, just what pops into my head first, I'll likely be editing this post as I remember and discover more.
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First - The AKS-74U is unrealistically inaccurate, I believe the Wiki said it has about twice the dispersion of the full size AK-74, and this is not true in real life. I'm sure we've all heard it said that "the AK is inaccurate", which ofcourse isn't true unless we are claiming every rifle that isn't capable of sub-MOA accuracy is inaccurate, in which case, so is the AR-15/M4/M16, the FAL, pretty much any main infantry combat rifle ever. But, one of the things that does impair the AK family of rifles in the accuracy department is the gas block.

Basically the barrel connects to the receiver at the front trunnion, which is right underneath the rear sight, and as you go out towards the muzzle, about halfway down the barrel is the gas block which is clamped onto the barrel, and then right near the muzzle you have the front sight post clamped on the barrel. The problem is, when the rifle is firing, the portion of the barrel between the gas block and the muzzle is whipping around(very slightly) and the harmonics that result from the vibrations "bouncing off" the gas block and front sight post, and from that "whipping" movement DO have an effect on accuracy, with each shot the barrel is in a slightly different position and this can cause the point of impact to slightly shift from shot to shot. The effect increases as the barrel heats up and moves around from the heat expansion. With most AKMs/AK-74s this isn't a big deal, if the rifle was well built and the parts are in spec and are made of quality materials, you'd likely not even notice and the rifle would likely be more accurate than the shooter.

I'm sure you're asking, "What does this nonsense have to do with the AKS-74U?", well I'll tell you! With the AKS-74U, the muzzle is far closer to the gas block than the full size rifles, this makes the barrel quite a bit more rigid, and so the amount of "barrel whip" from the barrel harmonics is greatly reduced. Now, this is offset by the fact that there is less barrel length overall, (8.1" on the 74U vs. 16" on the full sized 74) and so the projectile loses a substantial amount of velocity, it loses around 400-500 feet per second compared to the 16" barreled full size 74. This makes it so the AKS-74U would be less powerful(in terms of ft-lbs of muzzle energy) and would have a shorter effective range than its full sized counterpart, but within its effective range it would not be less accurate than the full sized rifles. Basically as long as the twist rate is enough to stabilize the projectile in the first place, you wouldn't be able to notice any loss in accuracy whatsoever, some people who have built AKS-74U's here in the U.S. have made the mistake of chopping down a full sized 74 barrel, which has a 1 in 8" twist, and the real AKS-74U's were built with a 1 in 6" twist, without the 1 in 6" twist-rate, there simply isn't enough barrel for the rifle to stabilize the 5.45x39mm round, with the correct twist-rate(that all the 74U's in Chernarus would have since they were factory rifles) they can stabilize rounds just fine. In fact, most of the testing I have seen has shown quality 74U replicas being capable of 2-3 MOA accuracy with crappy steel cased bulk ammunition, to put that in perspective the U.S. Army requires all M4 rifles to be capable of 6 MOA or less.

(MOA, or minute-of-angle, is a way of measuring accuracy in a firearm, all you have to do is shoot a group at 100 yards, measure the distance between the 2 outermost hits in inches, and whatever you get is the MOA, so for instance if you shoot a 5 inch group at 100 yards, that's 5 MOA. Lower number = better accuracy.)

I understand that the AKS-74U needs to have a shortcoming from a gameplay perspective, in order to prevent the AK-74 from being obsolete, but making it have TWICE the dispersion of the full sized rifle is a bit much in my opinion. I believe the AKS should have a much shorter effective range, and maybe do 1 - 1.5 or so less hit damage than the 74. It should also have a very loud report and a HUGE muzzle flash, we're talking fireballs people!

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Second - The Skorpion(and the RAK). The muzzle rise on the Vz. 61 Skorpion is incredibly high, to the point that if you aren't actively fighting the muzzle rise, each shot after the first is a good 2 to 3 feet above the last. I understand that this is a small firearm, and yes the lighter the firearm the higher the recoil(assuming you're firing the same load), but this has to be within reason. In real life, the Vz. 61's are ofcourse not in .380, they're in .32 ACP, which is a good 15-20% weaker on average than .380, but the difference is not substantial enough to make it as incredibly uncontrollable as it is.

Here is some video evidence to substantiate my claims, from Ian McCollum, one of the most knowledgeable individuals in the firearms community. He is even firing off-hand without the stock and isn't having NEARLY the amount of muzzle rise that we see in-game WITH the stock, in fact it isn't really rising at all. The footage of him firing the Skorpion as a pistol(no stock support) is glimpsed at the start of the video, but the full scene is around 6:45. He even comments that he incorrectly assumed firing the Skorpion without the stock in full-auto would result in the Skorpion climbing uncontrollably, which he withdraws after trying it and realizing that this firearm DOES NOT CLIMB AT ALL NO MATTER WHAT.

I believe that both the Skorpion and the RAK should have their muzzle rise and dispersion looked at, right now there is very little use for either firearm, just about every person I've ever fought that used one missed just about every shot even if I was right up in their face, and the shots that did hit me were ofcourse not enough to hurt me at all. Yes, they are low end guns, but I'm not asking for them to be the best, just to be useful in a gunfight. Both of these guns should have no trouble keeping atleast 50-60% of their shots on a man-sized target out to 25 meters during full auto fire, the fact that most of the time you'll get 0% shots on target at that range in full auto is pitiful and not true to life at all.

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Third - The UMP-45 has more damage than the AKS-74U, this makes no sense no matter how you look at it. Your standard .45 ACP load is a 230 grain projectile moving at around 835 ft/s, this comes out to about 356 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. The standard 5.45x39mm load is a 53 grain projectile, and out of the AKS-74U's short barrel it will be moving at about 2,500 ft/s(about 500 ft/s less than the full sized rifle), this comes out to about 736 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. There is no way, no way, NO WAY a pistol cartridge will ever compare to an intermediate or full power rifle cartridge.

The .45 ACP is a heavy, slow moving projectile that has horrible barrier penetration(armor and hard barriers are defeated by speed, not size/weight), a horrible ballistic coefficient, but does a good job at damaging soft-targets and is one of the best commonly available semi-automatic pistol calibers. It is also amazing for firing in a suppressed firearm, considering just about every .45 ACP load is subsonic naturally, you don't have to down-load the cartridge in order to get it to be subsonic, so it can be ultra quiet and still have it's full ballistic capability.

While it is a good pistol round, no pistol caliber can compare to a rifle caliber. Pistols are compromises, they sacrifice effective range, terminal ballistics, shootability, accuracy, and ballistic coefficient in order to save size and weight. A rather well-known saying in the firearms community about pistols - "The only thing a pistol should be used for, is fighting your way back to the rifle you never should've parted with." I think this is also true with pistol caliber SMGs.

There is a reason why police and military agencies such as SWAT teams and Special Operations units are all switching from pistol caliber submachine guns to shortened rifles such as the AKS-74U and 10.5" barreled M4s, it's because you can have a rifle that is the same size as an SMG but fires a much more effective cartridge. SMGs had their place back when the choice was between a pistol-caliber SMG or a full-power rifle like the .30-06, 8mm Mauser, and .303 British, but with the advent of the intermediate rifle cartridge (5.56x45mm, 7.62x39mm, 5.45x39mm etc) there is nothing that an SMG does that a short rifle can't do better.


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Thanks for reading, there is surely more to come! Let me know what you all think!

Edited January 18, 2018 by Abaddon_GC

[Baker. 1484]

Beans!

[cirkular 178]

Nice one! Definitely should get tweaked

[-Gews- 7443]

22 hours ago, Abaddon_GC said:

First - The AKS-74U is unrealistically inaccurate, I believe the Wiki said it has about twice the dispersion of the full size AK-74, and this is not true in real life.

Standard attachments:
AKS74U dispersion = 0.00295 (10.1 MOA)
AK74 dispersion = 0.0018 (6.2 MOA)

Best attachments:
AKS74U dispersion = 0.00279 (9.6 MOA)
AK74 dispersion = 0.0012 (4.1 MOA)


AKS74U may have equal or greater inherent precision but will have a larger dispersion value since it has a smaller sight radius and doesn't accept any optics. But dispersion is too much right now. So-called "AK101" (vestigial mislabelled AK74M) and AKM have only 0.0015 base dispersion, compared to 0.002 for AK74 and 0.003 for AKS74U which doesn't make sense either.

IIRC according to some tests it would seem you can consider dispersion value as about equal to extreme spread of average 5-shot groups.

22 hours ago, Abaddon_GC said:

In real life, the Vz. 61's are ofcourse not in .380, they're in .32 ACP, which is a good 15-20% weaker on average than .380, but the difference is not substantial enough to make it as incredibly uncontrollable as it is.

For comparison the .380 version have approximately 1/3 higher recoil impulse than the .32.

22 hours ago, Abaddon_GC said:

Third - The UMP-45 has more damage than the AKS-74U, this makes no sense no matter how you look at it. Your standard .45 ACP load is a 230 grain projectile moving at around 835 ft/s, this comes out to about 356 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. The standard 5.45x39mm load is a 53 grain projectile, and out of the AKS-74U's short barrel it will be moving at about 2,500 ft/s(about 500 ft/s less than the full sized rifle), this comes out to about 736 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. There is no way, no way, NO WAY a pistol cartridge will ever compare to an intermediate or full power rifle cartridge.

5.45 mm 7N6 above, .45 ball below.

Currently the DayZ .45 has over 150% of the 5.45's base damage, and it's about 90% of the damage of 7.62x39.

 

In ARMA 2 1.62+ and its DayZ mod "blood damage" of these rounds used to be like this (damage of rounds roughly based on energy):

.45 ACP = 1389
5.45x39 = 2722

 

Using DayZ standalone hit values it would have looked like this (damage of rounds roughly based on I don't know):

.45 ACP = 4500
5.45x39 = 2880

Edited January 19, 2018 by -Gews-