.50 caliber rifles. At some point we need to have a serious talk about this.

[bazbake 456]

Now is that point.

Arma II, your damage tables are bad. And thanks to you, DayZ's damage tables are very, very bad. Your weapon mechanics are bad. You should feel bad.

This is a post about .50 caliber rifles, the myths surrounding them, and to question why the developers just went ahead and threw all of the rules out the window when designing anti-materiel rifles. This is about Videogame Logic^TM in a game that purports to represent "authenticity." It is about some basic failures in weapon mechanics and how they led to some severe game balance issues.

1. These are really big fucking guns. Did someone not get the memo?

The Recoilless Rifle, aka, the M136 rocket launcher, has a loaded weight of 14 lbs. This is larger than the average size of the smaller caliber sniper rifles but not larger than every smaller caliber sniper rifle in the game (the fully equipped M14 is 16 pounds), but it is considered so large that picking one up causes you to abandon your backpack.

The M107 and AS50 both have a weight of 30 lbs and are about as long as a 12 year old kid is tall. But they fit neatly into your backpack. In fact, they take up the same amount of space and cause the same encumbrance as the 6 pound M4A1.

...

What. The. Fuck.

No. Seriously.

Whatthefuck.

P.S.

You can fire this thing standing up? Have you seen what happens when someone fires a .50 caliber rifle standing up?

http://www.myspace.com/video/craig/50-cal-sniper-rifle-standing/22174791#!

2. And they turn people into paste now?

Somewhere someone came up with the idea that high-velocity rounds kill better than low-velocity rounds. As Martin L. Fackler, MD, one of the creators of ballistic gel said on page 7 of the paper "Effects of Small Arms on the Body:"

The kinetic energy fallacy is a smokescreen which hides the actual ways in which the projectile interacts with tissue. Authors who use "kinetic energy transfer" as an explanation of how a projectile causes a particular injury are missing the crux of wound ballistics, as well as spreading the worst kind of misinformation; that which induces complacency by masquerading as knowledge. How much better off this field would be if the words "kinetic energy" were erased from its vocabulary; then one would be forced to look into the mechanical interactions of projectile and tissue wherein lies the key to understanding.

In his conclusion he states:

Recognizing that the penetrating projectile simply crushes tissue to form its hole and that the walls of certain parts of this hole may be dilated or stretched outward for a few milliseconds after the projectile passes, provides the basic foundation needed to understand the effects of projectile on tissue.

"But" one might protest, "the pressure wave of a .50 BMG is so high it can snap the back of a sheep just by passing near it!"

Where the hell did you hear that?

In his paper "What's Wrong with the Wound Ballistics Literature," Fackler says on page 2:

Contrary to popular opinion, this wave does not move or injure tissue.

He continues:

The lithotripter uses this sonic pressure wave to break up kidney stones [and] generates a wave five times the amplitude of the one from a penetrating small arms projectile. Up to 2,000 of these waves are used in a single treatment session, with no damage to soft tissue surrounding the stone.

There are two types of damage: temporary cavitation/stretching damage and permanent cavitation/crushing damage. The first is blunt trauma, like a baseball bat. The second is wounding trauma, like an ice pick. The human body is a shock absorber. Often to exaggerate a bullet's shockwave you'll see people shoot watermelons and blocks of wood. The problem is, if you've ever dropped a watermelon from two feet off the ground, you realize how useless it is to substitute a hunk of fruit for a hunk of meat. The human body is more like a rubber ball than it is an apple. Showing pictures of bullets passing through apples tells you nothing about how bullets interact with people.

It should be noted, however, that stretch from temporary cavity tissue displacement can disrupt blood vessels or break bones at some distance from the projectile path, just as they can be disrupted by blunt trauma. But in practice this happens very rarely. Data from the Vietnam conflict show that the great majority of torso and extremity wounds were attributable to the damage due to the permanent cavity alone.

In article "Wound Ballistics: Analysis of Blunt and Penetrating Trauma Mechanisms", on page 230 of the "Health Science Journal, Volume 4 Issue 4 (2010)," Christina–Athanasia Alexandropoulou, and Elias Panagiotopoulos are a lot more specific:

A review of 1400 rifle wounds from Vietnam (the Wound Data and Munitions Effectiveness Team study) found no cases of bones being broken or major vessels being torn that were not penetrated by the bullet, bullet fragments or secondary missiles. In only two cases, an organ that was not hit (but was within a few centimeters of the projectile path) suffered some disruption. In the vast majority of gunshot wounds, all tissue injured significantly, has been crushed by the intact bullet, bullet fragments or secondary missiles.

To put a fine head on it, here are the holes a .50 caliber weapon makes on impact with a target. The slow-motion images of ripples rolling through ballistic gel or watermelons and barrels of water exploding are used for exaggerated dramatic effect because they look really cool. That shit is stage dramatics.

"But rifle rounds are designed to tumble," one might argue, "and this gives them their incredible lethality."

Well, yes and no, but mostly "maybe."

As Fackler elaborates on page 6 of "Wound Ballistics":

The notion that a common cause of increased wounding is the bullet's striking at yaw angles...or even sideways due to "tumbling" in flight, is clearly fallacious. Anyone who has ever shot a rifle and observed the holes made by the bullet recognizes the they are round, not oblong, as would be the case if they yawed or tumbled in flight.

Okay, you already know that the entrance wound for the .50 caliber is a 1/2 inch hole. Well, Here is the rest of the wound channel for a tumbling .50 caliber BMG round. Notice how the first 8 inches of the wound involve an inch diameter of temporary/stretching damage while the permanent/tearing damage is equivalent to that of a 1/2 inch icepick until it goes eight inches into the body.

You know what parts of the body are shallower than eight inches?

• A human arm.
  
• A human leg.
  
• A human hand.
  
• A human foot.
  
• A human neck.
  
• An average woman's torso front-to-back.
  

The bullet has to go at least 8 inches into the human body for it to even start tumbling and cause the gruesome wounds you expect because it's really damn big and it takes a lot to knock it off course. The stories of legs getting blown off and people being torn in half? Not a very realistic display of the .50 BMGs single-shot killing potential. In fact, it's more likely to overpenetrate your target and make a 1/2 inch hole smaller than a AA battery.

Or as put on page 227 of the Health Science Journal:

A center-fire "high-velocity"rifle bullet, if it traverses only elastic tissue, such as skeletal muscle, does not yaw significantly, does not fragment or deform and does not hit a major blood vessel or nerve. It usually causes a fairly minor wound.

In other words, if you fire a .50 caliber bullet into any part of the human body that is thinner than eight inches, it passes clean through leaving a hole the size of a AA battery.

But, dude, it's a VIDEOGAME!

Oh, so this isn't about realism or authenticity or the boundaries of common sense. This is was done because someone wanted a really big gun to kill people in one hit 3 to 20 times over without sacrificing mobility or storage?

Then stop lying about it and just say that folks are just making another generic videogame so people will stop complaining when they get confused or angry at horrible failures of physics and ballistics design. Problem solved. I'll know exactly what the design goals of this game are and go back to Team Fortress 2 where people don't pretend they're being realistic.

Edited August 20, 2012 by BazBake

[vetrox 16]

why?

because video game

why again?

because game code

why some more?

go play zombie apocolypse irl if you dont like dayz OH YOU CANT

Edited August 20, 2012 by Vetrox

[Jimmy James 18]

Interesting read but I was hoping for something along the lines of "there's too many AS50s around, get rid of the top tier military weapons and go back to having mostly guns you'd find in homes."

Edited August 20, 2012 by Jimmy James

[tsugan 20]

Meh, not really THAT big of an issue, those rifles are supposed to be super rare, and therefore rarely encountered. But due to duping (hehe) they are everywhere and people are getting one shotted by them 24/7.

But it was an interesting read!

[Toilet 204]

Title made me laugh. The way I read it in my head it sounded like .50 caliber sniper rifles had done something wrong like gotten a bad report at school or something. Good read though.

[kingpootis102 28]

Meh, not really THAT big of an issue, those rifles are supposed to be super rare, and therefore rarely encountered. But due to duping (hehe) they are everywhere and people are getting one shotted by them 24/7.

But it was an interesting read!

They are getting duped and spawned in by hackers multiple times as we speak. My friend and I also found TWO AS50's at TWO crashed helicopters in a row. Not so rare at all.

I actually agree with OP here. Interesting read.

Edited August 20, 2012 by killerdude765

[vetrox 16]

Now is that point.

Arma II, your damage tables are bad. And thanks to you, DayZ's damage tables are very, very bad. Your weapon mechanics are bad. You should feel bad.

I read this part of your post and made my reply cos i just assumed it would be another rant on sniper rifles. Thats why you got a sarcastic reply from me.

Thought i would clear that up now before hate came my way

[Whopper 1]

Hey look another one of these posts!! Guess what if you grew some balls and left the shore/main cities you could possess one of these high powered military guns that are found at military bases!!! OMFG WHO WOULDA THUNK!

TL DR QQ more and venture north nubby

Read through it.... Not very TL DR, actually quite informative.

I guess it all falls back to this being a game that has some realistic game play elements to it.

Edited August 20, 2012 by Whopper

[dpactual 36]

Okay, you already know that the entrance wound for the .50 caliber is a 1/2 inch hole. Well, Here is the rest of the wound channel for a tumbling .50 caliber BMG round. Notice how the first 8 inches of the wound involve an inch diameter of temporary/stretching damage while the permanent/tearing damage is equivalent to that of a 1/2 inch icepick until it goes eight inches into the body.

You know what parts of the body are shallower than eight inches?

A human arm.

A human leg.

A human hand.

A human foot.

A human neck.

An average woman's torso front-to-back.

The bullet has to go at least 8 inches into the human body for it to even start tumbling and cause the gruesome wounds you expect because it's really damn big and it takes a lot to knock it off course. The stories of legs getting blown off and people being torn in half? Not a very realistic display of the .50 BMGs single-shot killing potential. In fact, it's more likely to overpenetrate your target and make a 1/2 inch hole smaller than a AA battery.

Or as put on page 227 of the Health Science Journal:

Quote

A center-fire "high-velocity"rifle bullet, if it traverses only elastic tissue, such as skeletal muscle, does not yaw significantly, does not fragment or deform and does not hit a major blood vessel or nerve. It usually causes a fairly minor wound.

I've seen war. I've seen people die. I've been to the deserts of Afghan as an infantry 0331 in the USMC. My platoon was over-watched by our sniper unit on multiple occasions, 100% of the time carrying their .50 cal. I've seen what those bullets do to people. They won't blow an arm off? A leg? A head? You have no idea what gruesome is till you see what a 50. caliber bullet can do to people in person. They will take limbs off, the head, cut the torso in half. I've seen it in person, I've moved the fucking blood and gut drained bodies. I have a whole new fear and respect for that gun after afghan.

I don't ever have a desire to see what that gun can do again.

[M4L 42]

well, what gun besides sidearms wud fit in yur backpack anywayz, unless its got detachable stuff :P

[thomas-tk@live.dk 39]

Sir, thank you for finally being a person who use arguments and actual facts when you state a problem, compared to the people who only use their personal opinion.

I agree with you, though we can hope that its an issue that is being worked on.

Edited August 21, 2012 by Kozak

[hawkygaming 43]

It's a fucking gun. Deal with it. Christ sake.

If they're being duped (which they damn are) I kind of agree at removal.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

We need less duping.

We need more encumbrance.

Damage is fine.

Serious talk here.

You've been in these threads, Baz. Every point you raise has been discussed elsewhere. Not sure why you post this like it's revelational.

Edited August 20, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[bazbake 456]

@JimmyJames

Videogame Logic^TM ignores Actual Logic. You can do anything you want with Videogame Logic^TM. You can create a military base full of cyborg chimps that escape every night to chase players down and call it Videogame Logic^TM. Resident Evil is filled to the brim with Videogame Logic^TM. When you involve Videogame Logic^TM you enter a completely different discussion that involves game balance, design, and loot tiers. And this is typically the motivation behind the damage tables for most sci-fi FPS's, fighting games, strategy games, etc. Videogames rarely use Actual Logic in their game design, and when a videogame relies on Actual Logic and then shapes its world around Actual Logic, it's an impressive feat and it deserves to be seriously praised if it also happens to be fun. The thing is, sometimes it's easier to just lie and say "Oh, yeah, we love Actual Logic. We've got tons of Actual Logic!" when what you have is a new kind of Videogame Logic^TM people haven't gotten used to yet.

Actual Logic has an in-built balance and design to it. What you put in and leave out is governed by some pretty self-explanatory real-world accommodations that are hard to argue against. But Videogame Logic^TM has an agenda. It's biased and motivated by something other than the things which motivate people to make real-world decisions, so it undermines real-world decision-making. And the question becomes, what exactly is that agenda, why exactly are the developers undermining real-world decisions to favor one choice over another. Does it increase game balance...? If so, then that is an accommodation that most players will accept as necessary to keep player engagement high. If it decreases game balance, then you have to ask, "Why would you abandon Actual Logic for Videogame Logic^TM just to make the gameplay more awkward?"

Side note:

Also, here's video of a point-blank shot from a .50 caliber rifle in real time for some perspective on real-world performance. It's hard to get a sense of scale since you only see the tip of the barrel and no ruler marks, but pause at 0:05.

Notice the small wound channel in the first block of ballistic gel and the huge knock-back and large tearing of the second ballistic gel. Also notice how the first block of ballistic gel barely twitches until the second block bounces into it and knocks over the table. The first ballistic gel block is closer to what happens to a soft target shot by a .50 caliber rifle. Notice the small, straight wound channel. The second block is a description of all of the energy that passes right through the target without doing damage and is a good example of why kinetic energy is a poor measure of ballistics trauma. In order for kinetic energy to impact the target, it has to be stopped BY the target which just won't happen with a high-velocity round against a soft target, especially a human-sized one.

Edited August 20, 2012 by BazBake

[Bullet Catcher 7]

well, what gun besides sidearms wud fit in yur backpack anywayz, unless its got detachable stuff :P

I believe many modern day military rifles can be torn down for transport/cleaning pretty easily. The shotguns and wichester I believe would be pretty hard pressed to do this...the Einfield as well.

[Hawk24 94]

The .50 BMG was a onehitkill on soldiers since ArmA 2 was released back in 2009

Not going to change just because you pull a ton of wound ballistic data and put them in the forums of a FREE MOD for ArmA2

Edited August 20, 2012 by Hawk24

[Lennsik 176]

As much as I don't really give a damn about AS50 realism, I gotta' say, I learned some pretty nifty things from this and it's obvious you did your research. Beans to you.

[Jeff the killer 32]

Well many other guns or items are quite large or heavy eg m240 12.5 kg and about 50 inches long or a the helicopter rotary thing it's still fine but it is true its unrealistic for some guy with a backpack with an m240 and 5 100 round magazines while holding an as50 can run as fast as a guy with only a makorav and can of beans and on the .50 damage I think it's kinda unfair but only because it's 1 hit kill everywhere like sure it's gonna screw your arm but you could survive if you had the proper supplies but with the tumble lets not forget these people are wearing stuff like backpacks,ammo pouches, and well clothing so you gotta factor that and having even a AA battery sized hole in any internal organ save the pancreas maybe

[JamesR 74]

Lol 5.56 will do more damage than you claim from .50bmg

[Hawk24 94]

Well many other guns or items are quite large or heavy eg m240 12.5 kg and about 50 inches long or a the helicopter rotary thing it's still fine but it is true its unrealistic for some guy with a backpack with an m240 and 5 100 round magazines while holding an as50 can run as fast as a guy with only a makorav and can of beans and on the .50 damage I think it's kinda unfair but only because it's 1 hit kill everywhere like sure it's gonna screw your arm but you could survive if you had the proper supplies but with the tumble lets not forget these people are wearing stuff like backpacks,ammo pouches, and well clothing so you gotta factor that and having even a AA battery sized hole in any internal organ save the pancreas maybe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence

[gbrabsf 0]

Why do you guys always find something to complain about? First it was about the bandit skins, now about the god damn weapons... what's next?

Hell, a shot to your hand wouldn't kill you. But you wouldn't fix it with bandages. You can't fix broken bones with morphine either.

Are you trying to say that carrying 30lbs would be difficult? And that it wouldn't fit in my backpack? Maybe it wouldn't fit perfectly, but who the fuck cares? I'd still be able to put it inside.

You just got shot and then got mad about it, deal with it. The fault was yours.

[Jeff the killer 32]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence

Lol ya ya I just don't see why perfect grammar spelling and punctuation is needed to say something on the Internet lol

[JamesR 74]

No you could not put an M107 in your backpack. The things are huge.

[porter653 1]

Now is that point.

Arma II, your damage tables are bad. And thanks to you, DayZ's damage tables are very, very bad. Your weapon mechanics are bad. You should feel bad.

This is a post about .50 caliber rifles, the myths surrounding them, and to question why the developers just went ahead and threw all of the rules out the window when designing anti-materiel rifles. This is about Videogame Logic^TM in a game that purports to represent "authenticity." It is about some basic failures in weapon mechanics and how they led to some severe game balance issues.

1. These are really big fucking guns. Did someone not get the memo?

The Recoilless Rifle, aka, the M136 rocket launcher, has a loaded weight of 14 lbs. This is larger than the average size of the smaller caliber sniper rifles but not larger than every smaller caliber sniper rifle in the game (the fully equipped M14 is 16 pounds), but it is considered so large that picking one up causes you to abandon your backpack.

The M107 and AS50 both have a weight of 30 lbs and are about as long as a 12 year old kid is tall. But they fit neatly into your backpack. In fact, they take up the same amount of space and cause the same encumbrance as the 6 pound M4A1.

...

What. The. Fuck.

No. Seriously.

Whatthefuck.

P.S.

You can fire this thing standing up? Have you seen what happens when someone fires a .50 caliber rifle standing up?

#!

2. And they turn people into paste now?

Somewhere someone came up with the idea that high-velocity rounds kill better than low-velocity rounds. As Martin L. Fackler, MD, one of the creators of ballistic gel said on page 7 of the paper "Effects of Small Arms on the Body:"

In his conclusion he states:

"But" one might protest, "the pressure wave of a .50 BMG is so high it can snap the back of a sheep just by passing near it!"

Where the hell did you hear that?

In his paper "What's Wrong with the Wound Ballistics Literature," Fackler says on page 2:

He continues:

There are two types of damage: temporary cavitation/stretching damage and permanent cavitation/crushing damage. The first is blunt trauma, like a baseball bat. The second is wounding trauma, like an ice pick. The human body is a shock absorber. Often to exaggerate a bullet's shockwave you'll see people shoot watermelons and blocks of wood. The problem is, if you've ever dropped a watermelon from two feet off the ground, you realize how useless it is to substitute a hunk of fruit for a hunk of meat. The human body is more like a rubber ball than it is an apple. Showing pictures of bullets passing through apples tells you nothing about how bullets interact with people.

In article "Wound Ballistics: Analysis of Blunt and Penetrating Trauma Mechanisms", on page 230 of the "Health Science Journal, Volume 4 Issue 4 (2010)," Christina–Athanasia Alexandropoulou, and Elias Panagiotopoulos are a lot more specific:

To put a fine head on it, here are the holes a .50 caliber weapon makes on impact with a target. The slow-motion images of ripples rolling through ballistic gel or watermelons and barrels of water exploding are used for exaggerated dramatic effect because they look really cool. That shit is stage dramatics.

"But rifle rounds are designed to tumble," one might argue, "and this gives them their incredible lethality."

Well, yes and no, but mostly "maybe."

As Fackler elaborates on page 6 of "Wound Ballistics":

Okay, you already know that the entrance wound for the .50 caliber is a 1/2 inch hole. Well, Here is the rest of the wound channel for a tumbling .50 caliber BMG round. Notice how the first 8 inches of the wound involve an inch diameter of temporary/stretching damage while the permanent/tearing damage is equivalent to that of a 1/2 inch icepick until it goes eight inches into the body.

You know what parts of the body are shallower than eight inches?

• A human arm.
  
• A human leg.
  
• A human hand.
  
• A human foot.
  
• A human neck.
  
• An average woman's torso front-to-back.
  

The bullet has to go at least 8 inches into the human body for it to even start tumbling and cause the gruesome wounds you expect because it's really damn big and it takes a lot to knock it off course. The stories of legs getting blown off and people being torn in half? Not a very realistic display of the .50 BMGs single-shot killing potential. In fact, it's more likely to overpenetrate your target and make a 1/2 inch hole smaller than a AA battery.

Or as put on page 227 of the Health Science Journal:

In other words, if you fire a .50 caliber bullet into any part of the human body that is thinner than eight inches, it passes clean through leaving a hole the size of a AA battery.

But, dude, it's a VIDEOGAME!

Oh, so this isn't about realism or authenticity or the boundaries of common sense. This is was done because someone wanted a really big gun to kill people in one hit 3 to 20 times over without sacrificing mobility or storage?

Then stop lying about it and just say that folks are just making another generic videogame so people will stop complaining when they get confused or angry at horrible failures of physics and ballistics design. Problem solved. I'll know exactly what the design goals of this game are and go back to Team Fortress 2 where people don't pretend they're being realistic.

Ill admit, I didn't read the entire thing. I thought you were referencing physics on small caliber weapons and applying it to something as ridiculous as a .50 bmg and I stopped reading. The sheer size of the bullet, regardless of speed, destroys human bodies. You can actually watch quite a few disturbing real military videos online and what .50's do to humans if you want to see them. I am not arguing that getting shot in the foot with a 50 will kill you everytime either, but until a game comes out with lifelike physics (none yet) we're going to have to settle for situations like this.

Same with your ".50 wouldn't fit in a backpack statement". Games always sacrifice realism for playability. Also plenty of humans can fire 50's while standing. Is it suggested or is it what the gun is made for? No. In a zombie apocalypse with 1000's of AS50's laying around would a lot of people develop the ability? Yes. Again, quit criticizing the realism aspects, or we're all going to be stuck with revolvers and shotguns.

If you made this entire post to QQ about the damage and effectiveness of the AS50, then you should have stayed on topic, your other points are BULLSHIT. I could easily make a case for most guns being unrealistic and at the top of my list would NOT be the AS50.

[dsi24 227]

My favorite part about the whole OP is when he posts a video with a guy firing a .50cal while standing as proof that you can't fire a .50cal while standing.