DayZ Gun Awareness Part 1: Realistic Damage Tables Based on Ballistic Trauma

[miket 92]

@KyusJin + MykeMichail

I understand that this is what you want to believe. But it's not true. Go ahead and read the citations, you won't be less wrong if you refuse to look at them.

@dev0

Thanks. I clicked on your link. It's not really a "shitload."

So that's a no on the temporary cavitation.

So it once paralyzed someone for several hours when it made their vertebrae slam together and this means it is conceivable at some point in the future that someone might possibly be paralyzed by a temporary cavitation to the spine.

Most of your sources can't be accessed, but I did find one article that collects several of them together and seeks to prove they are believable. Courtney and Courtney, 2007.

And this is their definition of "incapacitation."

So racoons can be slowed down by ballistic shockwaves...about half the time. The only way to reliably incapacitate, in fact, to actually harm the racoons was with .308 V-MAX rounds. V-MAX rounds are literally exploding bullets. Even then, it took a day for some of them to finally succumb. And then they didn't even dissect the racoons to see what actually killed them...the force of the shockwave or a heartattack from being shot at.

Sample size of 1400 people says that 99.85% of lasting ballistic trauma to humans is permanent cavitation. Bringing up one instance of temporary trauma or a study of "incapacitation" doesn't change that. Incapacitation isn't damage. You can incapacitate someone with a taser or bottle of vodka.

So you're saying that the velocity of a bullet has no impact on how much damage it does?

Does the same apply to a bus?

Why don't you go stand in front of a bus doing 5 km/h and see how much damage it does to you, then go stand infront of a bus doing 100 km/h to prove to us that velocity has nothing to do with how much damage a moving object will do to a person.

[miket 92]

Bad Science, bad science, bad science. Flawed Math, flawed math, flawed math. There you go.

Fixed.

[dev0 19]

There's no link to the sources for me to read.

If you ever read or wrote a scientific paper, you should be aware, that the format in which the references are given is the way the scientific community is giving references to scientific papers. Just sayin' (as an academic researcher - to hop on the bandwagon of "I know cool stuff, bc of my job"). Use google scholar, your university's library and whatever other resources you have at hand to look up the actual papers.

And "wounding effects" is really vague. Do they mean headaches or general pain? What we know from government records is that 99.85% of bullet trauma in Vietnam was caused by permanent cavitation alone. You seem very focused on the last 0.15%, which is not where I would focus resources when developing a simulation.

I don't know. In fact I haven't read those papers. If you are really interested you should look them up and read them. What I am trying to say is, that basing weapon damage on ballistic trauma through permanent caviation alone does not seem to be current state of ballistic sciences. The fact alone, that there have been so many high profile scientific papers published that seem to come to conclusions that are not in line with your "data", should provoke some amount of critical thinking.

Barring possible infection, you just described blood loss through permanent cavitation four times

Kind of, yeah. I described, as I said, secondary effects of ballistic trauma (which btw. might or might not be caused by permanent caviation alone). The point I am trying to make is, that even if we adjusted relative weapon damage to be in line with permanent caviation wounds, it would not fix the damage model, for as long as gunshot wounds would not leave you with big feckin holes that piss blood all over you. Let alone the fact, that the as far as I am aware the ArmA II damage model does not take lung, heart or spine traumas adequately into consideration, which would be far more important, than an relatively fixed penetration damage model imho.

(I hope you meant "circulatory shock" and not emotional trauma).

You have two tries to guess.

[foxdie_01 121]

Lots of text here. But my brief spell with the armed forces, i can confirm the nato 5.6 is designed to mame (like hand grenades) not kill - and will in most case pass straight through soft tissue with minimum local damage. A mamed solidier, requires at least 2 additional fully able soldiers to help stabilise and relocate, as well as being a burden on the supply chain than a dead one hence why its used instead of 7.6. There's also an argument that injured soliders have a heavier negative-effect on morale both directly with the fighting unit, and indirectly with the general civilian populus than a death.

This is also one of the million reasons why our soliders are unequipped to fight the modern war against dedicated extremists. With "the enemy" no such squad system, or supply chain exists to be effected by the lack of lethality of the 5.6mm round. They would be better taking a police approach in these situations and using squash head rounds (hollow point) designed for maxium lethality and bodily tissue damage to put a suspect down as quick as physicially possible and minimise over pentration.

Of cause theres a couple of conventions using such bullets on the battlefield though.

[Tankerd18 4]

Hey everybody, I made an account to reply to this!

Okay now I will say, OP... I think there's some holes in your argument. Now I totally agree that perhaps there should be a bit of a re-look at how much damage certain bullets do. Where I disagree is the permanent cavity point of view you are presenting. From what I've seen there's at least two guys on here who have some sort of military experience. And hey guess what!? I just happen to be a US Army tanker I know all kinds of things about bullets! ...Especially 5.56, 7.62, 9mm, and .50 BMG. And I also know at some point back there someone mentioned exit wounds. Let me assure you, and this is emphasised heavily in even low level Army basic combat life saving, the little 7.62 sized AK hole you have in your torso is never, ever comparable to the gaping exit wound it leaves on the side it comes out. Except in cases where the bullet was going really slow, or bounced/tumbled and went through more flesh than normal. Normally the exit wound is always exponentially larger, like the Marine guy said: 7.62 can blow out an orange sized chunk of your back, easily. This isn't made up. This is straight up, undoubted, been seen for years and years common military knowledge.

Someone in here mentioned how temporary cavity can make a small critter such a varmint explode when hit by a high velocity round. This is also completely true. If the strength of your skin and flesh to contain the temporary bullet cavity is exceeded, your flesh is going to break open. For instance, I know of an instance where an insurgent got "clipped" in the side of the head by a little baby 5.56 mm NATO round fired from an M16. It didn't poke a neat little whole in his skull, it blew half of it away. Look up the extent of the damage President Kennedy's head took when he was assassinated. It definitely wasn't 6.5mm Carcano sized on both sides. It's not just the head either. If you take a grazing shot to the side, there's a good chance it will split you wide open. This is exactly what I'm talking about when the muscle, skin, and bone of the body cannot withstand the force coming from the expanding temporary wound cavity.

Enough about the temporary wound cavity. Someone back there mentioned shooting someone with .50 BMG and .50 AE at the same distance. I don't feel like messing with quotes, but I have to totally back this individual up. It's not always so much about the width of the bullet as it is about the velocity, and the grain weight of the projectile. From what your argument seems to be promoting, I'm gathering that a 115 grain 9mm bullet shot at 1000 feet per second would hurt you more than a 123 grain 7.62X39mm bullet traveling at 2500 fps because it would leave a larger wound cavity as its wider. Well let me confidently assure you that you are incorrect. I've seen people shot by 9mm, I've seen people shot by 7.62X39... There really isn't a comparison. The rifle bullet going over 2 times faster will screw you up more EVERY TIME.

Next, I don't know too much about your data, and I really don't feel like reading into it. But are you sure that data isn't more about Vietnam wounded survivors and not about deceased casualties? Because I guarantee you're more likely to survive a bullet that luckily only poked a hole in you instead of a bullet that blew a gaping one in you.

OP: I'm not saying I don't appreciate your research into this. And in conclusion I do still believe there should be more accurate bullet damages. But honestly, I've spent my time over there... Twice to be exact. And I know for a fact that speed and bullet weight have a much more significant influence on the death the bullet deals than the bullet's width. Rifles aren't the primary weapons of soldiers just because they're more accurate man... They're our primary weapons because a rifle bullet hits you so ridiculously hard, and fast, that it's not comparable to that of a pistol. a 115 grain standard 9mm NATO ball doesn't even SORT OF have shit on even a 62 grain 5.56mm NATO ball round. But seriously though: be open to expanding your horizons a bit. It's really cool that you're willing to do this kind of research into improving a game like DayZ, and almost everyone here appreciates that, and at the same time everyone wants you to take their points of view with a litlte more salt. Your points are not invalid... But there's now at least 3 service men/veterans, and a good few others that directly disagree with your point of view.

Marine sniper guy: don't get worked up over this, man. At least he has tried to research into it a bit and isn't totally talking out of his ass. Though I completely agree with you, 7.62 will put the average chum on the ground dead/unconscious/bleeding to death incapacitated almost every time you tag him in the torso.

Oh and by the way I handload .30-06, .243 Winchester, .223 Remington/5.56mm NATO, 9mm NATO, and .45 ACP. I do know a bit about what I'm talking about. Also, Hornady A-Max and V-Max don't explode, they expand really fast. The worst they might do is fragment if they hit flesh fast enough. And in reality that is much less damaging than a bullet staying intact. But yeah if you wanna see a bullet that "explodes" look up Barnes Varmint Grenades. Pretty sweet.

Thanks for having me forum, hopefully I'll get a reason soon for my 2nd post. Haha.

[miket 92]

The logic used in this thread is equivalent to throwing a bullet at someone and coming to the conclusion that they are bullet proof when it bounces off.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Oh, right, bones. Well, your first mistake is talking about bone fragments like they're a given and then hanging your hat on it. 70% of the body has no bones in it. And even if a bullet hits one, even a high velocity bullet, you can't predict how far the fragments will travel, in which direction, or even how many fragments will be created in the first place. In other words, you want to form damage tables based on something you can't predict. I want to form damage tables on something that is easily predictable -- wound channels. Why is your system more logical than mine?

Unless your argument is that there is no argument. It's quite possible you're arguing that making it up as you go along is better than establishing damage tables based on actual bullet performance. But...why would anyone want to do that?

Also, MrTwo, temporary cavitation lasts 3 milliseconds at most, human tissue has the elasticity of rubber, and non-expanding rifle rounds achieve high temporary cavitation at depth...which means they would actually do less damage in the parts of the body you're thinking of because they would pop right through.

Due to limitations of simulating a gunshot wound via a program you can have your "easy" mode where all shots never hit bone, and temporary cavity's never rupture or you can have a system that says a bullet is likely to hit bone or cause a rupture if it is a through and through and misses bone. I like the second system because IMO it provides a more authentic look at what happens when a living thing is struck by a bullet.

Lets say your right that 30% of your body is made up of bone. This doesn't represent the actual structure of the body, or even take that into account. It also does not account for the arteries that run along your bones, a hit to one of these and your bleeding out very quickly so lets just add that space to the bone. With any given extremity there is as much chance to hit a bone as there is to miss because your arms/legs are made of big thick bones made to support your weight. Look at the torso, you have your chest cavity where bones protect your most vital organs, hard to miss here, you also have your shoulders again hard to miss. Pelvic region again hard to miss hitting bone, the neck would be like any extremity, and the head its impossible to miss. This only leaves the gut as to areas that have significant amounts of tissue with out protection from bone or bone to support them. Your gut is filled with organs that bleed and cause infection when their fluids escape into your body cavity. When you look at the body there is very limited real estate that would result in a superficial wound. Because of this I think it is your system that looks to make the outliers in terms of damage the norm rather than provide an authentic look at what happens when a living thing is hit by a bullet.

I agree its outside the limitations of a simulation to accuratley predict what happens when a bullet strikes a living thing when you factor in all internal structures like bones/organs. Throwing these factors out isn't the answer though, they are the factors that cause most of the damage from a gun shot wound. Your "system" is like testing with ballistic gelatin, it is "scientific" and predicatable but it does not provide an authentic simulation of reality. You want to throw out the factors that represent how the majority of damage is done, because IMO you view certain weapons to be OP in game. If your arguement was incrase damage from handguns/shotguns I would say hell yea, but you also want to nerf other weapons based on your opinion and papers about treating gun shot wounds that damage only tissue.

I realize you don't believe temporary cavitation results in lasting injuries, go look at footage of living things being shot or go shoot something, hell go watch a small block of ballistics gell being shot by a HP rifle, It happens. I agree that the more depth that is achieved the greater the cavity will be, this is partly why exit wounds are larger, but when there is limited space to achieve depth there is also limit space to contain any cavitation.

[bazbake 456]

@dev0

You don't know your own sources or anything written in them. I'm not defending your argument for you.

By the way, I get that you have ideas for an even more realistic system for bullet damage. A poster by the name of necro already beat you to it a month ago. I'm in that thread. Even mocked up some bar napkin injury tables for location-based damage involving infection, bleeding, and unconsciousness. All of your concerns are duly addressed there. Search function.

@MykeMichail

Why don't you go stand in front of a bus doing 5 km/h and see how much damage it does to you, then go stand infront of a bus doing 100 km/h to prove to us that velocity has nothing to do with how much damage a moving object will do to a person.

So your argument is that since buses kill by bouncing people off of them, then bullets kill by bouncing off of people really hard and the harder you bounce the bullet off someone, the deader that person is?

Sounds legit.

While we're at it, the sun revolves around the Earth because I woke up this morning and it was in the east and I came home and it was in the west so it's just so obvious, I don't care what those "scientists" have to say with their witchcraft. Now excuse me while I watch watermelons explode on youtube.

@Tankerd18

Next, I don't know too much about your data, and I really don't feel like reading into it.

We're done here.

I'm not saying you are any less likely to serve in the military as any other random person on the internet that I have never met. But when I quote military surgeons referring to military studies on wound ballistic and performance in military journals and military reports and then a random dude on the internet tells me "I don't really feel like reading into it" and then proceeds to tell me stories he says he's heard, I have to take what you say with a grain of salt.

@Mr Two

Lets say your right that 30% of your body is made up of bone. This doesn't represent the actual structure of the body, or even take that into account.

You don't know anatomy...and now you are going to expand upon this by explaining how you think the body works? This should be fun.

It also does not account for the arteries that run along your bones, a hit to one of these and your bleeding out very quickly so lets just add that space to the bone.

Wait, how would shooting someone in their artery with a high velocity rifle cause bone fragments again? I think you need to walk us back through that one.

You want to throw out the factors that represent how the majority of damage is done, because IMO you view certain weapons to be OP in game. If your arguement was incrase damage from handguns/shotguns I would say hell yea, but you also want to nerf other weapons based on your opinion and papers about treating gun shot wounds that damage only tissue.

Wait, how did we get to... Oh, now I get it.

Like I told dev0, there's already a thread on that. Dig it up. It's lonely and cold. This is about better bullet damage numbers to replace the current ridiculous ones.

When you first popped into this thread you said I tend to abandon posts once "experts" get involved. I replied:

I only abandon posts when the majority become, "I didn't read what you wrote, and I'm proud of that" or "You may or may not have addressed this already, but I'm going to go ahead and call you ignorant while talking about something you handily debunked and thoroughly dismissed in the first line of your post because...I'm not really sure why I'm here." Although Kyus Jin's hilarious, "I hate you, you suck, and I want to shoot you in the face" is becoming an all-time favorite. Now that's dedication.

Not the majority, but it didn't take more than a few hours for you to prove my point. Don't worry, you can share. There's plenty of "obvious direction this thread is heading in" to go around.

Edited August 24, 2012 by BazBake

[CerebralZombie (DayZ) 151]

Yeah I can't see why they couldn't make the main hitbox filled with a bunch or even a few hit boxed inside of it (Not fully inside but the hitbox player model made up of a bunch of boxes) to act as if that is where your organ(s) is/are located. It's be simple to do...

I think people need to read his second post more than his first...

Edited August 24, 2012 by CerebralZombie

[Tankerd18 4]

@BazBake: Look dude I'm not trying to be rude with you about it. But you're talking like youre cornered by a bunch of people that you can't convince of your point of view: which so far you can't. I'm not looking too much into this, it's not that serious. Hence why I have not read up your Vietnam surgeon deal, and hence why I have not come up with my own research backing up what I said. I don't need to, I don't have to prove anything, as the common consensus agrees with my point of view. I'm trying to give you a point of view from experience, which you don't have, and I do. I know you are absolutely convinced you are right. But dude, you don't need to go through the last 10 posts and pick out what everybody said that you don't like and lay down a snotty little cornered rat rebuttal. It's not helping you convince US that you are right. And that's your goal, isn't it?

When I say take it with a grain of salt. I mean look at what everyone else is saying, and consider that perhaps you are wrong. My goal isn't, and wasn't to convince you of anything. It's to convince you to look at some other pieces of research and open up to the idea that there is much more going on when a bullet hits you than getting a hole poked in you.

Spare me the impolite rebuttal, it's not helping your argument.

[zor. 4]

Zomg unrealistic weapon damage11!!!1

How about me severing your femoral with 9mm. Lolz

[bazbake 456]

@Tankerd18

You have one person with your point of view trying to engage using information that isn't gut instinct or something they think they heard from somebody once. The reason we're done here is because you aren't that person. And if you're not more concerned about the dude threatening to shoot me in the face with a .308 than you are that I don't take what you have to say seriously, then your priorities might be off.

But seriously, you don't have a "common consensus" by any measurement. You just have the angriest, most hostile, most violent posters on your side (welcome to the internet) and only one of them even read my post.

EDIT:

@zor.

Huh?

Edited August 25, 2012 by BazBake

[Tankerd18 4]

Haha, I'm not going to say Marine Sniper dude is not a little over the top. I've got you there. But dude you don't need to be so hostile, it's not that serious. I'm still sticking with my point of, I've seen it before, it does more than poke a hole in you. Does that work a little better for you?

Please humor me, and tell me you don't honestly believe a 7.62mm pointy metal slug going over a half a mile a second should do insignificant damage because its 3/10ths of an inch in width.

Also, for the record: We're done when we're finished responding to each other. You aren't the boss of ANYONE on these forums. If you're done arguing with me, stop replying. That's done.

And please, when you respond. Be polite. It's gonna be okay.

Edited August 25, 2012 by Tankerd18

[ScienceMan 9]

If you want realistic weapon damage then MAYBE you are right with your calculations. However, this would work for people who do not feel pain. If these numbers are accurate and lets say it takes ~10 markarov bullets to kill someone you would have to implement pain and shock better. For example, if you are hit with a bullet you will not be running anywhere until you pick your ass up off the ground and spend about 10 seconds to a minute determining what the fuck just happened. Hell, for the first few seconds after I hit my finger with a hammer I am shocked and don't have anything on my mind except for "Owww that hurts!"

I have seen people experimenting with 22 rimshots. The guy got entry and exit wounds in a turkey wrapped in a jacket at 200m... You cannot tell me that you can get a .22 size biopsy from you midsection and say, "I think I will sprint a 100m dash."

I would say if you want this ultra-realistic version then sure, do your calculations based on cavity size. But you should take into account pain and shock and not to mention blood loss. We have also mentioned blood loss a lot but no one has really put numbers to it.

The human heart pumps ~5.6L/min and even more during exercise. The human body contains ~5L of blood total. But you will die if you loose ~2L of blood. When you donate blood you give 1 pint which is 0.47L....

So if you hit the aorta you will die in ~21.4 seconds... NOW remember this is dying, passing out would happen much sooner. I believe you will passout or at least be very dizzy with .75L - 1L of blood loss. So any artery hit on the body should cause some major side effects within 30-40 seconds.

If you want an ultrareal game, go ahead and make your damage changes. But you should also put in that for a bullet hit your character falls to the ground for a short period of time. And afterwards he/she will stand up and stumble around with very little control on your end. It would be kinda like controlling a drunk person. And then I guess you would roll a % chance or something, I am guessing it would be like 15% of dying in the next 30seconds after the first bullet hit due to ruptured artery or intense bleeding. If you survive the next 30seconds then you will roll another %, this will be like 80%, and this will be you dying in the next hour to say if one of your major organs was hit and you didn't bleed out instantly. This would have to be fixed with something more than a bandage, I am thinking along the lines of assisted surgery. And lastly you would die from a body hit regardless in like 2 days unless you got antibiotics and surgery. And to make sure it was actually ultrareal, your character would move at ever decreasing speed and require rest for a long period of time to heal.

Realism is the fabric of the game, if you mess with one portion too much the game becomes unbalanced.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

You don't know anatomy...and now you are going to expand upon this by explaining how you think the body works? This should be fun.

You've read some medical papers and now your an expert on ballistics and bullet wounds? You've obviously never hunted or shot a living animal, have you ever even fired a gun?

You also didn't refute that the materials you cite, or your proposed method of damage calculation do not consider bullets striking bone, you really didn't refute anything I said, you simply said I'm not an expert so your sticking your head in the sand. Your not an expert either so why should anyone consider anything you say? Try refuting what is actually being said against your proposal instead of tossing insults.

Wait, how would shooting someone in their artery with a high velocity rifle cause bone fragments again? I think you need to walk us back through that one.

Because setting up hitboxes for every scenario is not possible, (What I said in my previous post) there really isn't a difference between the damage done from a bullet striking a bone and the bullet missing the bone and hitting an artery. Either scenario results in more damage and a higher chance of lethality than a through and through that only damages tissue. I'm saying that because of this the space within your body that is taken up by a bone or an artery could be counted as space that increases lethality.

Because of the above, and applying the same principle for organs I'm saying there is very limited relestate on the human body that would authentically represent the damage tables your advocating for. Rather than refute or respond to this you have chosen to attack semantics in wording and miss-represent what I'm saying. I hope I've clarified enough for you to actually respond...

Wait, how did we get to... Oh, now I get it.

Like I told dev0, there's already a thread on that. Dig it up. It's lonely and cold. This is about better bullet damage numbers to replace the current ridiculous ones.

When you first popped into this thread you said I tend to abandon posts once "experts" get involved. I replied:

I'm derailing because I'm calling you out on the fact that you hate rifles (mainly snipers) and think that they are OP? My asertion is based on your own posts, there are a number of them attacking anything that fires high velocity rounds.

Wound effects and damage numbers can not be seperated, to have any type of authentic system they must be considered at the same time, instant damage is the replacement for lasting effects or a more authentic medical system period. What I and others are disputing with your proposition is that you do not consider velocity in your damage table, thus rifle rounds do less damage than hand gun rounds, this is what is ridiculous.

This is playing out like your other threads, Huge OP citing the same materials, 1 or 2 posts supporting OP and then insulting opposition directly or insulting their statements rather than refuting them. Then you abondon the thread and make a new one that is basically the same thread...

Edited August 27, 2012 by xXI Mr Two IXx