Very confused regarding weaponry + gameplay questions. LONG POST!

[Neonetik]

Note: If you are unable or unwilling to read a long post like mine, that is ok. There is no shame in not wanting to take time out of your day to assist someone with an issue like this, and it is preferable to me to receive answers from those who were willing to fully read and understand the issues I have. Thank you.

Hi all. I just bought the game and have completed just the first few missions, and am having a lot of trouble understanding a few things relating to weaponry, stats and gameplay.

Firstly, the game very clearly encourages a "stealthy" approach to combat, from the game's advertising, the accomplice telling you to stay quiet, the tutorials explaining how to choke and sneak and stuff. It also says in the opening that killing is optional, which made me happy as my intention was to avoid killing. However, from what I can see in my inventory, I have like, 2 non-lethal weapons (being the tranq rifle and the taser), and only a few "silent" weapons (those 2 along with the starter pistol as an example). Meanwhile, it seems as though everything else is a lethal weapon, and loud.

What's up with that? The game does seemingly everything to encourage a stealthy approach, but it looks like the vast majority of the effort in its development of tools and weaponry was put towards creating a violent run and gun type shooter, from having dozens of loud/lethal options, and even various types of noise increasing and speed decreasing body armor. Right now, my approach has been to start levels with the Tranq rifle, the "silent" pistol (is there a non-lethal option for the pistols, because I didn't see one, so currently I'm not even using this at all), the taser item, the empty magazine item, and the flashbang item, and no armor. Is that like... it? I'm not necessarily saying that's not enough or whatever, but I do feel like I may be doing something wrong here considering it seems completely pointless to use anything else aside from the tranq and taser weapons unless you are expressly going against what the game was pretty clearly stating it was designed around. Even other "silent" weapons like the throwing knives are fatal, which I guess isn't an issue if you don't care about killing everyone, but if that's the goal, wouldn't you go in guns blazing anyway?

Next, I am a very confused relating to the stats of the weapon. Primarily the "noise" and "vol" stats.

The noise stat states it increases movement noise the player emits when the weapon in question is holstered. So... what? When the weapon is actually equipped and in use, this stat has no effect, but when the weapon is placed AWAY and I am just using my fists, then I am making more noise as a result? Doesn't that seem like it should be the other way around? What's the point of holstering a weapon if doing so causes my character to be louder when moving around as a result? Or it that simply meant to encourage players to take as little equipment as possible, to reduce overall noise when moving, but still allowing them to have a single weapon equipped which would not impact noise level as long as it is equipped? Am I meant to try to AVOID taking equipment with me aside from a single weapon as a result if I wish to minimise movement noise, due to everything else holstered adding to my overall volume? Does that mean if I want the lowest possible noise for my non-lethal playstyle, I should literally JUST equip the tranq rifle and NOTHING else?

Speaking of moving around, how do I interpret the "sound" meter in the hud? Like, I get more bars means I am making more noise, but what does that yellow square mean that is near the lower end of the meter? Does that square indicate when noise becomes audible to enemies around me? Am I supposed to always stay below that yellow square or else enemies will detect me when I move behind them? I feel like I must have missed some tutorialisation there but for the life of me I don't remember the game teaching this at all. Having a radius or something to show sound waves and how they affect enemies would be helpful here, but no luck there I suppose.

Next is shot noise (vol stat). Some weapons, in their main picture, show a little speaker icon with an "X" next to it, which I interpret as meaning "silent", seeing as other weapons do have icons with 4 bars of volume next to them. However, weapon also have the "shot noise" stat, which always has a value, like, for the tranq gun, it states 6.3m next to it. So, is it silent or not? Does that "X" icon just means "it's more quiet than other weapons but still not actually silent"? That's pretty confusing for me. Would figure it should just have one bar of volume instead of, you know, an "X" next to it. An "X" next to a speaker icon is pretty damn universal when it comes to its typical meaning of "silent", but the numbers state otherwise.

In addition, both the first 2 pistols in the pistol inventory have the "X" icon, but one of them has a 20.3m shot noise stat, and the other has a 34.4m shot noise stat, but both of them still have the X next to their picture. Again, what is up with that? I assume "supp" means "suppressed", and there is a suppressor in the pistol icon for that second pistol (MK23 SUPP), but the shot noise "vol" stat has a second level noise wave icon. So... what the hell? This all seems very contrary to itself.

Next, the game stats that to unlock a weapon, I gotta leave the mission with it in my possession (like cruelty squad I suppose). Is there an easy way to tell if I have not picked up a weapon previously? No offence to gun nuts here, but I don't see how anyone not familiar with guns can be expected to remember something like
"ok, using my incredible memory, in my inventory (which I cannot check mid-mission), I have a BGTVP9, an MK23SUPP, a S&W4575, a H52000 (etc etc etc + 5 more random jumbles of numbers and letters), oh! This enemy dropped a FHSO2810! I'm missing that one! Better pick it up and carry it with me to the end!"
I mean, that just seems a bit absurd to me. Maybe I'm just a moron and no one else has any issue remembering a dozen different weird combinations of numbers and letters after looking at them for a few moments, but my god, no one in my country uses guns aside from the police, so it seems like a lot to expect me to remember in the middle of a high tension stealth focused mission.

Also, wait, to unlock a weapon, I have to leave the mission with it in my possession? So like, I need to ditch one of my very few and very limited stealth based weapons, and potentially travel a far distance through dozens of enemies that I could REALLY benefit using a stealth + non-lethal weapon on, like the one I HAD to drop to actually take this other gun with me to unlock it? What?

Actually, that raises ANOTHER point. Why does the game give you like, 5 shots with the tranq before its empty, but all other guns have several mags/clips or whatever of backup ammo, along with all enemies dropping guns that shoot ammo, along with the game itself providing many weapons with ammo on tables in the middle of missions themselves? I've only played a few missions so far, but is the stealth approach purposely made to be extremely limited and as ammo starved as damn-near possible? Why does seemingly every aspect of the gameplay itself seem to be screaming at me to use guns and kill everyone when the advertising, characters, and tutorialization all seem to encourage a stealth focused approach? This all seems extremely conflicting to me and I really don't understand how I should be approaching any of this.

I'm also pretty confused at how the damage system for weapons works. The skull filling with color seems to imply that 100 damage would be a guaranteed fatality. If a pistol does 52.5 damage and another does 60 damage, what difference does this really make when fighting an enemy? It's 2 shots either way, isn't it? There's also ammo type and stuff which I'm not yet sure how important or impactful that all really is. Maybe there will be specially armored enemies later in the game, but currently, I don't see any way of viewing enemy stats or damage resistances or armor rating or anything like that at all, but even on on the first page of pistols without even scrolling down, there's 2 pistols where one is seemingly drastically better than another in every meaningful way.

The MK23 SUPP vs the HS2000, the MK has 12 bullets per mag vs HS 10 (20% mag increase, not bad), the MK has lower sound of 34.4m vs the HS 78.1m (so, literally only half as loud, seems very good), and the X next to its icon (whatever that X means, as described before I'm not sure), it has higher damage (60 for the MK vs the 49.5 of the HS, so 2 shots vs 3, pretty bloody big difference in a game like this, effective cuts kill-time by a third), and it uses a higher caliber of bullet (not sure how important that is yet as mentioned but I figure it must be some sort of bonus). The only thing the HS has over it has a better accuracy of 2.5 degrees vs 4 degrees (wow, an entire 1.5% accuracy bonus, which would only ever possibly potentially even matter at all on long-range targets, how impressively game-changing! Certainly worth all those sacrifices!) and the HS has a 7% noise increase level as opposed to the MK 9% noise increase level (again, a whole 2% noise reduction, specifically when the weapon is holstered! Wowee! What a massive bonus!). This all seems to be very much leading towards the HS being kinda pointless as a choice. That said, the HS does have more ammo, but enemies drop ammo and as stated it seems to be placed in a lot of places anyway, so this doesn't seem like it would ever really be an issue (plus the fact that it'd take more bullets to take down enemies with it anyway nullifies this bonus as well a fair bit).

I stress the above paragraph is literally just a single example based on a single screen of the game, and I could probably apply it to a dozen things. I am being a bit sarcastic in my comparison there, but my confusion remains.

Also, what is the effective difference between punching an enemy with the C key (or with weapons holstered), vs choking them out? They seem like they get knocked out either way, and so far, I've had several experiences where it seems like the only way to take down a specific enemy is to run into the room through a SINGLE entrance in front of them and knock them out before they pull out a weapon and start shooting me (though admittedly this may be me being a total idiot and the developer actually intended me to skip these enemies entirely as they were only meant for use as backup for other enemies on patrol if I was discovered or whatever so fair enough if so).

What am I missing here? Because I feel like I am missing like, a dozen important details about the game that would greatly increase my enjoyment of it. It seems to be reasonably well-made so far, but a lot of the design choices really seem to contradict each other.

Thank you so much for any help.

[blue]

hey ! hope this helps a bit! i also hope it's not too confusing to read, as adding quotes might make it even longer. it generally follows the order of the questions asked, separated by paragraph, save for the last one.

non-lethal weapons are certainly scarce in the first game, yeah. most of your non-lethal options come down to diversions and avoidance than directly taking enemies down. the taser and tranq rifle are nice, but their ammo limits them; something like the hsr-emp is really important, and can help conserve the ammo for potentially more important targets. i don't believe there is a non-lethal sidearm, but, you could bring a loud, lethal one, just for the noise if you wanted to bring a bunch of patrols to one area, though, you might find that way too risky to try out. also, the flashbang is far from non-lethal if multiple enemies are around, if you want to use it over the emp gun, or magazines, be careful with it, haha. on the note of armour, having at least the lowest level of kevlar on can be helpful for running away, as you can take a shot or two, but the speediness of nothing can be nice, as well.

the game certainly does encourage some type of stealth, but, doesn't particularly restrict you from doing whatever, as long as you can handle it. there's a lot of effort put into detailing stealth with a bunch of different mechanics because it comes into effect all the time, even in direct combat. generally speaking, even if you didn't care about killing everyone, going loud immediately puts a lot of pressure on you, as you'd attract a large volume of people to your current position immediately. using something like throwing knives or similar beforehand would reduce that amount to a maybe more manageable pace. this goes for non-lethal as well, as setting people on alert would be significantly less dangerous in the moment if a majority of them were knocked out, but, that would pose its own problems in setting a situation like that up.

as for the noise stat, the primary weapons generally increase the holstered noise the most (outside of armour,) and the rest from item slots and the sidearm slot build-up as you equip more of them, but are mostly negligible on their own. bringing a primary generally means you have to deal with the noise it makes while using your other items, or dealing with the swap speed if you're holding it all the time. having a high noise rating can also make you indirectly slower, as you might have to lower your movement speed in certain areas to compensate for the holster noise. generally this is from heavier armour. weapons and armour can also be dropped when they're out of ammo, or not needed anymore/at the moment, which can be nice.

sound meter, you're mostly correct on that! the yellow square is basically just "ambient noise." certain locations are quieter, or louder than others, and as such, you'd be allowed to make more or less noise depending on that. once you're above the yellow square, enemies can start hearing you, depending on how much more noise you're making. if you're below the ambient noise threshold, you are more or less silent to them. i believe it indirectly tells you something similar about ambient noise, but, doesn't tell you about the indicator. usually you're fine to go a few blocks above the indicator and still be able to punch someone before they start shooting, but, i wouldn't try to go for chokeholds at that point.

shot noise/volume: the X speaker icon does seem to just mean "quiet." the tranq gun's volume of 6.3m fills up about three bars on the noise meter in-game, and as such, is more or less "silent" due to ambient noise. you'd have to be in a quiet building to have it make a detectable noise, but, i can't imagine it'd be a particularly large radius. the MK23 SUPP is slightly louder than the B&T VP9 due to a couple factors, but, they're both significantly quieter than other pistols. the B&T VP9 is mostly unusable in direct combat, due to its sluggish firerate (you have to manually pull the bolt each shot,) low ammo capacity, and very slow reload. armour might even make it take three shots to kill. its low volume is its main benefit, and the factors that make it hard to use against alerted foes are mostly negated when you're undetected. the MK23 SUPP doesn't suffer from those issues as badly, due to its significantly faster fire-rate, and the ability to just insert another magazine for reloading. it's slightly better combat-wise, and can allow for taking down multiple people while sneaking more reliably, but is louder as a result. using it indoors mostly contains the louder shot noise.

the game usually tells you if you don't have a weapon unlocked yet when you pick it up. something along the lines of "this is a unique weapon, exfiltrate with it to add it to your loadout." it's usually pretty reliable. its generally not a big deal to have to drop the weapon you came in with to pick up a new one, as the gun you're using might be close to running out of ammo, or out entirely. although, as you mentioned, it can sometimes bring its own challenges, depending on the situation. usually, though, you'll either have made a safe/safer path on your way to the weapon in the first place, by neutralising a few patrols or have snuck through said patrols in the first place, and can get out in the same manner, regardless of what you've just picked up. if its a big issue, you could probably drop the weapon outside and go back for what you dropped in the first place, or wait to pick the new weapon up until the mission objectives are completed.

for the damage system, any attack against an unaware foe any attack is a one shot, regardless of damage or armour. when an enemy is alerted, then the damage, penetration and armour matters. i believe enemies use the same armour as you do, and you can check out the stats there. intravenous 2 shows how the penetration works a bit clearer in its menu, and i assume the same (or similar,) system is used here. mousing over the armour shows its penetration protection and base damage reduction. if the penetration protection and weapon penetration match, the displayed value is what you get for the displayed damage reduction. each point below the protection increases the damage reduction slightly. if the weapon's penetration is higher than the protection, then the damage reduction is halved. i'm unsure if their equipped armour is tied to enemy models, their skill level, or just the level in general. i believe this also affects how much regainable health you are left with after being shot, but, you were asking about the enemies.
basically: weapon pen. > armour pen. = 1/2 protection
weapon pen. ≤ armour pen. = full protection (+ bonus protection per lower weapon pen.)

as for MK23 SUPP vs HS2000, mousing over some stats will give more details. specifically, the HS2000 has some benefits to turning accuracy and per-shot spread, but it's very minor. it also has a very, very slightly farther effective range, and, additionally, as mousing over the ammo says, the ammo is incredibly common. on further inspection, it seems to use something similar to intravenous 2's stat system, but, doesn't display all the stats. testing in-game reveals the HS2000 seems to have a faster bullet velocity than the MK23 SUPP as well, so, some things might just have to be figured out by using it. i do agree the 49.5 on true difficulty feels a bit weird, though.

punching an enemy makes a small amount of noise, as does their body (if that's a factor in this one,) while choking them takes longer, but, doesn't make any noise. it also has the small convienience of allowing you to pick them up immediately.

plenty of enemies can be skipped by without issue, and dealing with some of them out might make more issues for you than just leaving them be. especially with the limited ammo supply of the taser and tranq rifle, as some foes can be especially hard to get to with melee, like the ones that peer out windows from couches, but, they usually don't guard anything valuable near them, either. they definitely seem like stationary obstacles for sneaking, and extra reinforcements if you get spotted, but don't pose much threat beyond that. though, specific examples of being forced to deal with an enemy head on through a single entrance doesn't come to me. sometimes they do that while searching around for you after being spotted and escaping, but, i'm not sure of that happening just while patrolling around.

also, since i didn't find an opportunity to say much on it earlier, the lethal weaponry seems to vary from anywhere between fairly light back-up/speedy weaponry if stuff goes wrong, to general assault stuff. the main issue with taking them along is having to deal with them while sneaking, as they're noisy, and slow you down a bit, especially with heavier armours, generally making your sneaking ability a bit/a lot worse. additionally, i think the limited ammo on non-lethal weaponry (being around ~10 shots combined between the tranq rifle and taser) is because they're incredibly quiet, leave no blood, and you can potentially have a fairly safe path from the start of the level to the objective (and back,) with just that, plus some fisticuffs. i do agree it would've been nice to have more options for it in this game, though. i'll also take the opportunity to say, again, the HSR-EMP is really great for sneaking, and generally works well with almost everything, especially if you have to get close and melee people to conserve ammo.

[Neonetik]

Hi there! Thanks for the reply. Seriously, much appreciated. I haven't gotten back to the game just yet, but I've saved your post for the future. Just wanted that to be known. This really helps a lot!

[blue]

i'm glad i could help!

[soppyamoeba8402]

FYI Silencers/suppresers don't make guns fully silent, they can still be heard, so having a silenced gun still make some noice is realistic