A load of ballistics part 1: muzzle energy.

[Alf Tupper]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3116984964

Ballistics have interested me as long as I have been shooting. I was curious as to how WOTH would model external ballistics, and with what degree of realism.

So let us start with muzzle energies. The game thoughtfully allows us to use Huntersense to read out a bullet's energy. The encyclopedia also includes an image for each type of rifle ammo, which very usefully is of real life packaging, and allows us to (mostly) identify the ammunition and its characteristics.

I acknowledge that things such as barrel length will affect real world performance, and my own measuring of muzzle energy could be a couple of Joules high or low, but the data's good enough for Government work I think. If I have made errors, please correct me.

Remington Magnum information was a little scarce so I have cherrypicked what seems to be typical; .308 offered three bullet weights so again I have picked the weight that seems to fit best to what we see in game.

Does anything jump out?

Firstly, the .30-30 in Grandad's rifle is a reduced recoil load, which is why you may feel it is a little lack lustre.

Secondly both .338 and .223 are a bit lower in game power than real power, and by about the same margin.

Finally, .243 is higher in power in the game than it would be in real life.

But overall, this is is pretty accurate stuff.

[dbond1]

Interesting stuff Alf, thanks for posting.

Nothing jumps out for me, as a matter of fact it essentially correlates with my anecdotal observations. I felt the .243 and .270 were the best performing rounds as we talked about before, and that the .30-.30 was below expectations.

Since returning a month or two ago from a months-long break, I did start to feel like the .300 was not performing as well as I'd expect. There are so many variables, and my observations were just along the lines of 'that shot should have done more'. Enough that I switched to the .338 for class 6. But your table has it smack on 100%.

[Alf Tupper]

Originally posted by dbond1:

Interesting stuff Alf, thanks for posting.

Nothing jumps out for me, as a matter of fact it essentially correlates with my anecdotal observations. SNIP.

You are very kind, thank you. My next two 'episodes' will be on energy retention and bullet drop, I just need to pretty the spreadsheets up a bit. It's no spoiler, but we will see that the devs have departed from total reality in these two areas.

I am still scratching my head on if there is a way to approach terminal ballistics methodically; if anyone has any good ideas, please let us know.