A Buff to pistols?

[RanchDubois]

#1 https://streamable.com/007hyl
Should damage increase if from this clip here an AP bullet is shot into the shoulder and could pass into the chest cavity through an armor gap?

#2 https://streamable.com/uepm33
Perhaps suspects could suffer some sort of CC when shot into chest armor with AP ammo from a pistol? Such as short duration aim accuracy debuff or perhaps a short 0.5 second stun?

[Col. "Bat" Guano]

First thing you have to realize is that pistols are back up weapons, they do much less damage than pistols and rightfully so. The AP pistol rounds are not truly AP, more like regular ball FMJ rounds except for the FN 5.7.

Secondly there are two different levels of body armor in this game, soft armor (kevlar) and hard armor. Handgun and submachine gun rounds (even the p90 and MP7 or in your case in clip #2 the Fn-5.7) will not penetrate hard armor, you need to hit the upper portion of the chest not protected by armor with these weapons or use a rifle with AP/FMJ rounds.

[RanchDubois]

Originally posted by Col. "Bat" Guano:

First thing you have to realize is that pistols are back up weapons, they do much less damage than pistols and rightfully so. The AP pistol rounds are not truly AP, more like regular ball FMJ rounds except for the FN 5.7.

Secondly there are two different levels of body armor in this game, soft armor (kevlar) and hard armor. Handgun and submachine gun rounds (even the p90 and MP7 or in your case in clip #2 the Fn-5.7) will not penetrate hard armor, you need to hit the upper portion of the chest not protected by armor with these weapons or use a rifle with AP/FMJ rounds.

Why do you not address anything from my post?
-there are gaps in the armor where arms fit through my question was about shooting into the chest cavity in those gaps
-cc can be incorporated with 5.7 ap penetrating soft armor and inflicting damage (flinch) or it can potentially spall off hard armor and cause damage (flinch)

[Graywolf364]

Pistols don't have particularly good lethality. Roughly speaking a service caliber pistol has a 1 in 4 chance of causing a fatality. Much lower than centerfire rifles or shotguns. I've even seen some municipal ER data that puts handgun survivability at about 90%.

Handgun lethality is a complex topic with a lot of different factors that contribute, but generally speaking full metal jacket ball ammunition is worse at killing than jacketed hollow points. Because ball ammunition won't expand when it passes through the body. Hollow point ammunition expands (most of the time, denim in particular is notorious for preventing all appoint expansion) when it hits the body which makes for a larger wound cavity. The theory is this increases the chance you're going to hit something vital and increases blood loss. With unnaturally perfect shot placement it doesn't really matter if you're shooting FMJ or JHP. But gun fights with pistols are frantic affairs, so your first shot resulting in a instantaneous kill or incapacity is unlikely. So you're going to want JHP. That said domestically, conventional wisdom is the vast majority of shootings with pistols are with FMJ. Since most people aren't particularly knowledgeable about the nuances of ammunition selection and a good hollow point is about a dollar a round. Additionally in criminal culture, there isn't that much of a knowledge base about maintaining firearms, so you'll see guns recovered at crime scenes loaded with a huge range of ammunition. Whatever they could scrounge.


True armor piercing ammunition is some of the rarest and most expensive ammunition in the world. What exists in game is presumably FMJ ammunition called armor piercing so people who aren't gun literate can easily understand. Which is a little annoying but understandable.

On the rifle side, you could shrug and call the AP ammo 'green tip' which is FMJ, but with its metallic penetrator it's considered to be semi armor penetrating. It's also extremely common in the United States. That's why a lot of 'special threat' plates are designed with green tip in mind.

Pistol ammo requires some hand waving. Rifle plates will defeat FMJ and JHP pistol rounds as will pistol rated soft armor at the appropriate NIJ level. But that doesn't make for particularly fun gameplay. Which is why in-game pistol ammo can reliably penetrate through hard armor. So you can pretend that your virtual SWAT team with a strangely small number of shooters and a weird hodgepodge of dated and high-end kit has the financial reserves and access to equip the team with armor piercing or semi armor piercing pistol ammo.

Lastly it should be acknowledged that if you shoot a plate long enough, eventually you will break through. Especially if all the hits are very close together. The longstanding advice of keep shooting until they stop is quite apt here. But ideally you want follow up shots to be headshots, bypassing the problem of trying to penetrate through the plate all together. In that regard I think the game does have that dynamic when facing armored suspects. They may not flinch as long as many players want, but they flinch long enough that you can readjust and make a headshot after a good torso hit. I haven't felt hindered by running hollow point for both rifle and pistol ammo in-game.

[Graywolf364]

As to your point about armor gaps it would be nice to see if the hitboxes for armor were expanded upon and deepened. Especially since your SWAT team does have the option of running deltoid armor.

Contrary to media depictions, a shoulder hit is pretty debilitating. It's a ball and socket joint and you have a few major arteries running through it. It may not be instantly fatal but it is incapacitating. At the right angle it could theoretically pass through into your central torso cavity. But there's a lot of bones in the shoulder and collarbone area. My off the cuff guess is between the bones and very particular angle of entry there's a good chance that the bullet is going to exit elsewhere maybe even hitting your side plate or side of one of your armor plates. But it's definitely something to investigate I'll keep an eye out for more hard data on the subject.

I think the particular scenario that you presented is relatively uncommon in course of normal gameplay. It would be great if the game were complex enough that it could simulate that kind of wounding behavior. I certainly would applaud it. But I don't think it really needs that deep of the level of simulation for that particular edge case.

To your second point, suspects do get stunned when shot while wearing armor. It's not very long and it seems to very depending on suspect type but I found it's usually long enough that if I keep on shooting I can usually land a headshot.

And much like in the real world, there is a term for when you're rounds don't seem to have an effect on target. It's called a miss. I saw your clip multiple times and watched it in slow motion. It looked like you missed the vast majority of your shots it only seemed like you made a hit on suspect's plate at the very end while you were already dying.

[RanchDubois]

Originally posted by Graywolf364:

To your second point, suspects do get stunned when shot while wearing armor. It's not very long and it seems to very depending on suspect type but I found it's usually long enough that if I keep on shooting I can usually land a headshot.

And much like in the real world, there is a term for when you're rounds don't seem to have an effect on target. It's called a miss. I saw your clip multiple times and watched it in slow motion. It looked like you missed the vast majority of your shots it only seemed like you made a hit on suspect's plate at the very end while you were already dying.

-yeah if so, doesn't seem that long at all.
-idk if we watching the same clip. slowed down to 1/4 speed watching the laser on shot: Suspect shoots drywall->i shoot chest-> I shoot lower right quadrant abdomen(should be unprotected on some vests to allow user to sit/bend down) -> i shoot right medial thigh -> i shoot right medial thigh again -> i shoot navel -> suspect delivers lethal shot to me -> i miss (hit punch?) and die. Should the suspect immediately die from that? No. Should the suspect be able to slowly walk forward and deliver accurate lethal shot after taking 4-5 hits in one second? idk.

[RanchDubois]

Originally posted by Graywolf364:

As to your point about armor gaps it would be nice to see if the hitboxes for armor were expanded upon and deepened. Especially since your SWAT team does have the option of running deltoid armor.

Contrary to media depictions, a shoulder hit is pretty debilitating. It's a ball and socket joint and you have a few major arteries running through it. It may not be instantly fatal but it is incapacitating. At the right angle it could theoretically pass through into your central torso cavity. But there's a lot of bones in the shoulder and collarbone area. My off the cuff guess is between the bones and very particular angle of entry there's a good chance that the bullet is going to exit elsewhere maybe even hitting your side plate or side of one of your armor plates. But it's definitely something to investigate I'll keep an eye out for more hard data on the subject.

Wouldn't expect them to include bone hits into their damage calculation but they did include arterial bleeds (how it's implemented into the game i'm not sure) which seems pretty advanced. Bone fractures are also dangerous in itself -fragments or ends can cut soft tissue after being propelled during a break. If fmj projectiles can pass through soft targets it might not be difficult for an additional calculation of what other hurt boxes are in the path of the projectile.

[Graywolf364]

Backing up a bit. I've long thought one of the hardest things to communicate in games is the idea that a incapacitating or fatal hit does not necessarily mean that someone is out of the fight. The right arterial bleed from a bullet or slashing can drop you into unconsciousness (incapacitating but not necessarily fatal) in a couple of minutes (obviously more injuries means last time) but we have plenty of real world cases of people continuing to fight till they go unconscious. We also have plenty of cases of people with unsurvivable wounds continuing to pose a clear and present threat until they die.

Ignoring my joke about missing for a second, once we discount many of the stories which are actually people missing and not realizing it, we also have plenty of real world cases of people getting shot and for a variety of reasons not acknowledging the injury right away.

We also have many real world cases of people taking multiple hits to their armor and carrying on like nothing for a few minutes. Although many of the cases I recall offhand don't have happy endings.


So it's not entirely inauthentic for AI to power through injuries and it's to their body armor well continue to engage you and your virtual team. But it's really difficult to communicate that to the player without it looking like a glitch. It's not the type of feedback that players are used to getting.

I've worked on a few mod projects (not for RON) that introduce various penalties for enemy AI in response to certain stimulus. Such as getting hit or initial reaction to white light from a WML. And during testing found that a lot of those penalties aren't noticeable. Even with extreme accuracy penalties to the AI on hit, it's not obvious to the player. All that gets noticed is the AI is actively shooting at you, not that most of the shots are missing. Stuns had better results. But if it's too short, It suffers from the same problem it's not particularly noticeable. No one's going to notice a few moments different. If the stun goes on for too long it looks like a bug and makes things too easy. If you randomize it, you have all the problems of both and it makes it look like even more of a bug because it's inconsistent. It's extremely difficult to dial in the time so it feels just right. And there's always going to be plenty of players you think it's too fast or too slow regardless.

Really the only feedback that works well is some sort of extravagated full body animation in conjunction with the penalty. But you still have the same problems with time. With the added bonus of things looking uncanny if animation goes on for too long or plays too fast. And even then, plenty of players won't notice it.

Personally, I found the hit reactions from suspect AI to be largely fine. But there's plenty of trends from other players who strongly disagree. It's a very tough thing to balance, and as an early access game we will see things swing back and forth throughout development. But ultimately you can't make everybody happy. I for one am looking forward to seeing how it grows and changes as we get further and further in development.


As an added real world wrinkle, when one looks at the vast majority of shootings within the United States, most people give up after getting shot before things get to the incapacitation or fatal level.


I was viewing your video on my phone so I'll chalk it up to not being able to properly see detail on my small phone screen and assume you're description is correct. Lower abdominal and pelvic hits are a fascinating subject. At various points through the years I remember them being held up an excellent option for one shot stops (particularly with shotguns) to them being terrible because there's nothing vital there and you can't always count on shattering the pelvis. What always cracks me up is a lot of these arguments for or against bring up examples from the 'Wild West' as case studies.

I'm of the view (both in-game and in the real world) that your best bet is concentrating on the upper thoracic and if the shot presents itself go for the head shop. Since there's plenty of vital organs in the former and is there an easier transition for the latter. Both from looking at real world shooting data and from hundreds of hours of doing force-on-force, I find that center mass hits are more intuitive and can be more reliably pulled off with less cognitive load. Because people will naturally aim towards the gun of whoever they're shooting at. With enough training I'm sure shooters can get to the level where going pelvic and lower abdomen is just as fast and instinctive but it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. But that's just one random guy on the internet's opinion, so take that with a massive grain of salt. I'm sure that there are plenty of the fascinating reads that are well reasoned and well-researched arguments arguing the opposite. Lethality is such a fascinating subject I always learn something new every time I dive into it.


I vaguely remember reading somewhere that in-game arterial bleeds are mostly a randomized thing without any sort of sophisticated simulation behind it. And a few of the change logs have noted that they've increased and decreased arterial chances based on what ammo type you use. Bone fragments and breaks are absolutely nasty wounds that will screw you up in a multitude of ways, I don't really see a way to communicate that in-game thought. Especially if it's essentially a dice roll. Since in the scheme of things it doesn't really make that much of a difference if it takes two rounds to drop a suspect back or three. I for one of my fan of the five shot string which it's pretty consistent at putting suspects down hard. But I am absolutely in favor of a more sophisticated injury and penetration system. It probably won't add much to the game and I don't think we'll get it but one can dream. I just like the idea that a sophisticated injury system is there even if one doesn't actually notice it in practice.

[Growler Guy]

Pistol Rework: https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/mods/2147

[RanchDubois]

Originally posted by Graywolf364:

I was viewing your video on my phone so I'll chalk it up to not being able to properly see detail on my small phone screen and assume you're description is correct. Lower abdominal and pelvic hits are a fascinating subject. At various points through the years I remember them being held up an excellent option for one shot stops (particularly with shotguns) to them being terrible because there's nothing vital there and you can't always count on shattering the pelvis. What always cracks me up is a lot of these arguments for or against bring up examples from the 'Wild West' as case studies.

They can be. The pelvis is a hollow space fed into by large blood vessels and containing a dense supply in the bone itself. Approximately 4 litres of blood can be bled into this cavity. The average human holds approximately 5 litres of blood total. Massive hemorrhage into this space will eventually be fatal if uncontrolled. I do not think aiming here is good gameplay.

I believe it was said the raison d'être of the game as an art is to illustrate the conflict and struggle SWAT face. You're right complex injury and ballistics systems doesn't add much to this. I believe they can approach this best by more accurately simulating ai as something less like terminators that continue fighting until their bodies no longer function. Most shooters that commit horrible crimes do not behave in this way.

[Graywolf364]

For anyone else reading along I'm sure it may seem like I am going back and forth between multiple points and that's because this is a fascinating and nuanced subject that's hard to represent within a game environment.

I've audited a few law enforcement active killer and counterterrorism courses and trainings. I haven't been to one since the start of the pandemic, but one of the things that was strongly emphasize in the active killer trainings I attended is that the vast majority surrender when confronted by responding LEOs. And as we already discussed when looking at hard data of shootings, a lot of people who get shot give up before we get to the point of fatal or incapacitating injuries. Which I think plays a major part in why some metro areas have the 90% survivability rate. Lastly even hardcore criminals value their lives. They don't want to die, they know the hellfire that rains down if they kill a cop and that you can't win against the well-trained SWAT team. That's why many kids join criminal gangs in the first place, because they think it will provide protection.


So I'm in agreement that the majority of suspects in-game shouldn't act like terminators. And that most of our encounters with them even the ones that involve shots fired should end with a surrender instead of a fatality or incap.

Which is where the hard work of dialing in balance comes in. I do think there is a place for more terminator like enemies, particularly in the handful of marauding terrorist attack scenarios. And that all suspects should have some chance of tanking hits to keep things feeling dynamic. But finding the right mix of animations and behavior is going to be challenging.

I do think that a longer stun lock isn't necessarily the best solution. I would much rather see suspects surrender with a wider range of animations quicker vs having them stunned for a few beats longer. But it's really hard to say what will end up working best until things are expanded upon in-game. I would also like to see a larger pool of suspects without hard armor and NFA items.

Another particular gameplay challenge is we are missing a major part of the SWAT experience. When it comes to shooting ability there isn't that big of a performance difference between regular people and cops. SWAT guys obviously tend to be on average better than their patrol peers but when it comes to close range gun fights the performance differential between a true novice and an experienced shooter is surprisingly small. But where cops shine in comparison to a shooting enthusiast is when it comes to verbal de-escalation skills. Even with the dedicated shout/notification button that aspect of the gameplay is pretty simplistic. And we don't have a lot of intermediate options between your initial notification and a gun fight. The primary way you interact with the world and the suspects that populate It is by shooting them, which isn't authentic.

My thoughts aren't fully realized on how deepening the escalation gameplay would work, but it's definitely something I would like to see expanded upon. I think it would positively impact the gameplay and make the gun fights feel more impactful because of the more complex lead up to them.

[Tajin]

judging from those recordings i'd say you're simply firing a bit too fast. Wouldnt surprise me if some of those bullets were not actually on target.

[RanchDubois]

Originally posted by Tajin:

judging from those recordings i'd say you're simply firing a bit too fast. Wouldnt surprise me if some of those bullets were not actually on target.

first one yea some misses but thats not why i posted the first clip its paired with question on penetration damage

second one has already been broken down shot for shot at 1/4 and also comes with attached question. go to kill house and fire a pistol max rof at a paper target firing too fast not a problem

[Andy Mil]

Ahhh I see ur video
sadly many here dont take this is video game to account and know how it work
I believe dev like make hitbox torso literally every single part of sus torso as body armor without actually thought that what if player able to shoot their upper torso from above or the model literally not wearing armor there

I too tired to make thread bout it. I been doing this looonger and tired of it

and I able to tell which u miss too. I suggest not aimming with laser like that now cuz it can lead to those miss aim and slow aim like that on video
I have doing that before and I can miss easily like that before too

for now u cant do anything unless dev willing to put more work into details work like this and update the game
also u gotto shoot to kill now else u dead. Dont wait while they stun they wont listen to ur yell
There are currently no diff if u arm/limb shot. They all just giant health pool together like Counter Strike
and they armor literally stronger than u and cover litterally to their nut. Pistol take like bout 3 shot to drop if u dont miss or limbs shot
for 5/7 pistol
Every pistol now like nerf in this update soo dont bother playing anything else including my very old days early access version boy .357 Colt Python. No more hand cannon now
and I dont think they gonna add those buff u suggest too. It too RPG