JE Sawyer on MAD GUN SKILLZ

[OnTheBounce]

Well, fiendish, your friend was wrong, because velocity isn't the real killer when it comes to terminal ballistics. The killer is what damage is done to tissue and how vital that tissue is.

There's quite a lot of rubbish that's put out regarding what kills people when they're shot, and the usual culprit cited is velocity. High velocity tends to create a large "temporary wound cavity", which is a "baloon" inside the target where tissue is violently displaced as the projectile enters the body. Unfortunately for proponents of this school of thought most tissues are so elastic that it does little or no harm to the affected tissue. (There are exceptions, for instance the liver suffers heavily if caught in this "temporary cavity", but these are the exceptions, not the rule. Muscle and blood vessels are very much unaffected by it, and that's very important, since the heart and major blood vessels are prime targets.)

Most of the kinetic energy transferred to a target actually converts to thermal energy with little tissue damage. The actual wound channel is what you're looking to have lance through the vitals. A broad-head arrow will cause more damage than almost any bullet wound and it will also defeat various types of body armor which simply aren't geared toward defeated anachronistic weapons, but rather the bullets that they're far more likely to face.

Don't take my word for any of this, though. Get "the skinny" yourself. I highly recommend the video Deadly Effects: What Bullets Do to Bodies, although it's out of print and hard to find. (This video also goes into showing that Hollywood-style reactions to bullets such as people getting knocked down or flying through the air when hit are pure, total and utter fantasy (read: bullshit).

Like Atoga said, however, it's all about balance. While a x-bow would be a viable weapon on the post-apocalyptic battlefield, a game is another thing entirely and, when the smoke clears, it's all about balance and playability.

Cheers,

OTB

[thefiendishpuppy]

I wasn't exactly saying that velocity was the killer, and I did mention in there somewhere that it's the tumbling of the bullet that causes large wounds - and you're quite right, it is the location of the wound that is everything. You could call it a matter of life and death

My point on velocity was that the lower velocity of the crossbow bolt would mean it would be more easily defeated by good armour. This could quite easily be implemented if certain combinations of bullet type give lesser damage against certain armour.

Consider it this way. You have your gun, which shoots the ammo at a given velocity. It's the ammo that counts, in some respects... JHP is nasty, because due to the fact that the point is hollow, it splits and spreads, causing far larger wounds than an ordinary bullet. Thing is, if JHP hits armour, it 'splats' against the armour, and doesn't hurt the guy IN the armour.

AP is - to my knowledge - more of a solid bullet sort of thing. It doesn't split when it enters it's target, meaning less damage... but it is more likely to punch through the armour than JHP is, which means you'll do more damage to an armoured target with AP rounds.

Personally, although they had 10mm JHP and 10mm AP I never saw the difference. They didn't seem to implement this as well as Jagged Alliance 2 did, where AP rounds actually did less than JHP to unarmoured foes, but to armoured ones, JHP did nothing whereas AP was slightly diminished.

OTB, all your points were right... but I was on about armour penetration, not sheer damage. Sorry if I misled you.

I think in this sense Crossbows - and different ammos - could be used interestingly. Solid Slug shotgun ammo anyone?

EDIT:

The point about the arrows is interesting, but - unless it's a longbow, which I remember my teacher saying could punch through cars and a few inches of solid metal, as he had seen it done in a reenactment fair - I don't think Metal Armour would be all that affected by it. Of course, with all these points we're making, I think we're probably killing Leather Armour to the point where none will ever use it again

[OnTheBounce]

My point on velocity was that the lower velocity of the crossbow bolt would mean it would be more easily defeated by good armour. This could quite easily be implemented if certain combinations of bullet type give lesser damage against certain armour.

Again, I have to disagree. The projectiles have different properties. Even the sharpest of bullets is dull compared to the edge on a broad head arrow or bolt/quarrel.

Also, "good armor" is a rather problematic concept. Something like woven kevlar strands can and will keep out bullets, but will not stop a broad head arrow which will simply cut the strands, whereas a bullet's force is spread out and then absorbed by multiple strands of the weave.

Consider it this way. You have your gun, which shoots the ammo at a given velocity. It's the ammo that counts, in some respects...

Yes. No arguments here. But I would like to see the inclusion of various types of arrows/bolt/quarrels if bows and x-bows are included in FO3. The majority found should be target tips, which wouldn't be very effective versus armor at all.

AP is - to my knowledge - more of a solid bullet sort of thing. It doesn't split when it enters it's target, meaning less damage... but it is more likely to punch through the armour than JHP is, which means you'll do more damage to an armoured target with AP rounds.

AP ammo generally has a two or three layers. The first is a "ballistic cap" which consists of soft metal and is aerodynamically shaped. The second is a "armor piercing cap", which also consists of a soft metal, but is there to help "bite" into a target if the projectile should strike angled plate and helps to prevent a shot from glancing off. Sometimes a single cap is designed to do play both of these roles. Finally, you have the armor piercing core, which consists of a hard metal that will actually do the penetrating.

Personally, although they had 10mm JHP and 10mm AP I never saw the difference. They didn't seem to implement this as well as Jagged Alliance 2 did, where AP rounds actually did less than JHP to unarmoured foes, but to armoured ones, JHP did nothing whereas AP was slightly diminished.

Ammo sub-types were poorly implemented in the RPGs. The problem was the Dmg Mod, which had JHP doing 4 times as much damage as AP (2/1 vs. 1/2). Since the DR Mods had no effect on an enemy's DT the AP ammo tended to do so little damage that it couldn't overcome the DT. The effect was that you were invariably better off hosing someone down w/JHP than AP.

OTB, all your points were right... but I was on about armour penetration, not sheer damage. Sorry if I misled you.

After having read your post I thought you were on the track of the "high MV = high lethality" schools of thought. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post.

I think in this sense Crossbows - and different ammos - could be used interestingly. Solid Slug shotgun ammo anyone?

Agreed. However, I really hope they don't simply follow the road taken in FoT w/the slugs, where they were simply AP ammo, yet still had the overly powerful area effect properties that shotguns suffered from in that game.

The point about the arrows is interesting, but - unless it's a longbow... - I don't think Metal Armour would be all that affected by it.

Which brings up another point: if bows are implemented will they simply be of a generic type?

OTB

[Doyle]

That AP thing could actually have been fixed quite easily. If they had made the damage mod 1/1 instead of 1/2, AP would have started being more effective after leather armor.

[OnTheBounce]

That AP thing could actually have been fixed quite easily. If they had made the damage mod 1/1 instead of 1/2, AP would have started being more effective after leather armor.

Yep, and it's a simple thing to do w/the FO Mapper.

Still, it would work better if there were a "Penetration" rating, or something that affected both DT and DR, rather than only the DR.

OTB

[thefiendishpuppy]

Problem with a penetration stat on a weapon is if there is one which gets out of hand, even the best armour becomes useless, and it can get irritating.

Something like woven kevlar strands can and will keep out bullets, but will not stop a broad head arrow which will simply cut the strands, whereas a bullet's force is spread out and then absorbed by multiple strands of the weave.

Yes, you're quite right. I have often heard the quote that bullet proof armour isn't knifeproof, because it will cut strands like that. Of course, I thought merely Kevlar = good against ranged, bad against close, and didn't think of the cutting effect of an arrowhead. Good point there OTB.

Yes. No arguments here. But I would like to see the inclusion of various types of arrows/bolt/quarrels if bows and x-bows are included in FO3. The majority found should be target tips, which wouldn't be very effective versus armor at all.

Again, very true; this would be an interesting thing to see.

AP ammo generally has a two or three layers. The first is a "ballistic cap" which consists of soft metal and is aerodynamically shaped. The second is a "armor piercing cap", which also consists of a soft metal, but is there to help "bite" into a target if the projectile should strike angled plate and helps to prevent a shot from glancing off. Sometimes a single cap is designed to do play both of these roles. Finally, you have the armor piercing core, which consists of a hard metal that will actually do the penetrating.

This I didn't know; I merely thought it was something that was more solid and less likely to split than JHP...

Ammo sub-types were poorly implemented in the RPGs. The problem was the Dmg Mod, which had JHP doing 4 times as much damage as AP (2/1 vs. 1/2). Since the DR Mods had no effect on an enemy's DT the AP ammo tended to do so little damage that it couldn't overcome the DT. The effect was that you were invariably better off hosing someone down w/JHP than AP.

That was something close to my point a few replies back about the ammo types, that implementing AP properly would have been nice, but they fscked up...

That AP thing could actually have been fixed quite easily. If they had made the damage mod 1/1 instead of 1/2, AP would have started being more effective after leather armor.

Yep, and it's a simple thing to do w/the FO Mapper.

That's interesting! I've never used the Fallout Mapper, so I don't really know that much about this. I'll have to play around with it sometime.

After having read your post I thought you were on the track of the "high MV = high lethality" schools of thought. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post.

No, no, I was stripped of this fallacy long ago. It's quite an easy trap to fall into, I agree... but velocity - as we've quite rightly stated - is not everything.

However, I really hope they don't simply follow the road taken in FoT w/the slugs, where they were simply AP ammo, yet still had the overly powerful area effect properties that shotguns suffered from in that game.

Damned right! I never knew there were multiple types of Shot for Shotguns until I read Hot Rods and Gun Bunnies, a BESM 1st Edition extra sourcebook. In the instance of Solid ammo, you lose the "spreading" ability for the "armour piercing" ability. The same *should* have happened in Fallout Tic Tacs, but if I remember correctly, that was a bug because they didn't do the weapons properly. Oh, sorry - "known issue", they don't like the word Bug...

Also, I think because guns which are emptied in Fallout 2 have different stacks for different previous ammo types, does that mean that each one is a different weapon - or the same weapon in a different state - that means they don't stack? Is that why they form different stacks? As I said, I've not used Fallout Mapper, so this may be why I am not sure on this

The point about the arrows is interesting, but - unless it's a longbow... - I don't think Metal Armour would be all that affected by it.

Which brings up another point: if bows are implemented will they simply be of a generic type?

To mess with a metaphor, I fear you've hit the arrow on the head there.

Ah, well. Time to return to the wastelands...

(Note, I know some people's quotes weren't in that exact order or like that, but I did this to show the train of thought I'm following. I'm trying to put it in context, but if I took something out of context, I didn't mean to and I'm sorry.)