what walls can i shoot through and is their a way to tell

[TTV.Chad_femboy]

i was doing shadow raid with a sniper and i managed to kill 1 guard through the warehouse wall

[Copy & Cat]

after some changes pretty sure 99% of the walls you can shoot through with AP or sniper

[Greb]

You can shoot the cam guy in his little box on a Bank Heist using an AP weapon like shotgun with slugs, snipers or the 5/7 pistol. From outside the bank. Through layers of brick, wall, and such. You can't shoot the cam guy through the wall in a Diamond Store heist because of reasons/lockers/something (bad idea to try anyway because overpenetration probably going to hit glass and set off the alarm)

If you use Graze, you literally hit everyone in a straight line on most levels. It's crazy.

At this point it's probably easier to list the walls you can't shoot through over the objects you can.

[Lieutenant | Patriot Enforcer]

Theres no clear distinction, Payday 2 is VERY inconsistent when it comes to penetration; some props like plants, flags and invisible walls dont allow penetration and certain brick or concrete walls allow you to.

Rule of thumb with a sniper rifle; only shoot through walls if its not a prop and is a relatively thin surface.

[Nirvash]

Maybe this was changed, but I distinctly remember being able to shoot through brick walls, and then not being able to shoot through some window blinds or flags. I also think there's an issue with shield penetration, that you need to shoot through the front and center. Whereas if you shoot at the corner, the penetration won't work.

It's a very sketchy system that just takes time to get a feel for.

[The Least Interesting Chibi...]

Penetration got changed during the sniper update. Before how penetration was handled was all bullets collided with objects, and AP rounds spawned a new bullet 5mm after the initial impact point. If the new bullet collided with a new wall then it stopped.

Now all bullets penetrate regardless of weapon or ammo type, but the damage is only applies if that bullet has the AP property. Basically, now objects check to see if the bullet is supposed to effect it.

This had a side effect in VR stealth where melee swings were causing glass breakage through multiple walls, and thus failing stealth.

I consider Seven the local expert on the penetration mechanic, so hopefully he can pop in and explain it better.

[Greb]

Also all bullets AP or not penetrate civilians now, which sucks.

[The Least Interesting Chibi...]

Originally posted by Greb:

Also all bullets AP or not penetrate civilians now, which sucks.

Well... yes. This was to prevent copses blocking bullets. And possibly to reduce desync in combat since now corpses and damage can be sync'd in parallel instead of serial. Buuuuut... don't quote me on that. I am neither a network engineer, nor a Lua programmer.

[Seven]

Originally posted by The Least Interesting Chibi...:

Penetration got changed during the sniper update. Before how penetration was handled was all bullets collided with objects, and AP rounds spawned a new bullet 5mm after the initial impact point. If the new bullet collided with a new wall then it stopped.

5 units (cm), and only for shields. 40 for everything else. There were also some exceptions for see-through objects that allowed penetration for all bullets, and breakable objects that spawned another raycast to check it, but that's another matter.

Now all bullets penetrate regardless of weapon or ammo type, but the damage is only applies if that bullet has the AP property. Basically, now objects check to see if the bullet is supposed to effect it.

Mostly correct. They implemented a special raycast type for wall penetration which presumably works as it did before and allows the ray to ignore a wall that is 40 units thick or less and then stop at the next wall. It's all done by the engine now, so it's hard to say for sure. Without wall penetration, the ray will collect hits on every single unit that it hits along the bullet trajectory, up to 200m (max range of all weapons currently) regardless of walls. In either case, it'll then iterate over the hits and determine what to do with it.

Now, the tricky part is that it'll only account for some very specific types of hits. It'll check for walls (world geometry and vehicles), enemies, and shields. For each unit the bullet hit, it'll register an impact and then check if it should continue checking for impacts. If the unit is an enemy and the weapon can't penetrate enemies it'll stop. Likewise if it's a wall/vehicle that is not see-through and wall penetration is not allowed, or if it's a shield with no shield penetration allowed.

The issue here is that those unit types I mentioned are not the only ones that the ray can hit, most notably corpses and civilians, but also some things like turrets. Anything I didn't explicitly list allows full penetration regardless of the weapon penetration attributes. I assume it's an oversight, but at this point, who knows? There's also that just because you can see through something, it doesn't mean the AI can, which is what determines whether it's a solid wall that requires penetration, or a weak one like a glass window that you can fire through. Car windows are especially inconsistent about this, with some being see-through and others not on the very same car.

It's also worth noting that the whole wall penetration check is a bit iffy in general. It works for most places, but there are some spots where it behaves rather unusually. One example is the jewelry store, where you can stand in the alley to the left from the street and fire a sniper rifle into the store wall which will penetrate not only the first wall but continue into the small passage that lets you access the right alley on the other side of the store before it is finally blocked by the far right wall. There's also some cliffs in front of the building entrance on big oil day 2 that allows you to shoot through them if you get the right angle. This was not an issue under the old implementation that I can remember, I suspect due to that extra raycast for breakable objects I mentioned before.


TLDR: I dunno. If it's a single wall and it's thin enough, then you can generally shoot through it with penetrating weapons. If it's something the AI can spot you through, you can shoot through it with any weapon. Results may vary though.