SCP:SL Gunplay explained

Many people, even after putting a few dozen hours, hell maybe much more, struggle with this games gunplay and just find themselves being run down by people who seem to only hit headshots. In this guide I shall explain how guns work in this game and hopefully enhance your gameplay by giving tips and strategies.

This is my first guide! Be sure to give suggestions and correct me!

Hello! Welcome to the guide, glad to see you here. As someone with 400 hours as of writing this in this game, and with "really good recoil control [...] and gunplay" according to others, I figured I'd try to give the whole guide thing a shot. Here we go.
**This guide is meant for human vs human, not vs SCP!**

Gun attachments and how to make good builds

Every gun has certain attachments that you can put in certain slots. You can access these with workstations across the map which you press E on to activate, then press E on the highlighted parts to select an attachment. Alternatively, while a spectator, you can press TAB to access attachments for all guns. When you are done making a good build, which I will explain how soon, make sure to save it as one of your presets!

This game, as of 13.5.1, has and probably will be dominated by a hipfire meta. In this game, you can sprint in any direction and have full air control meaning movement is high and therefor hitting your enemy when they are moving so fast is harder. This just means that ADSing makes you terrible slow and unable to sprint where you will be shot down as you struggle to hit shots. Now this doesn't mean you can't ADS, it's just that I highly advise only doing so where hipfiring won't get the job done. So, hipfire good, ads bad (usually), what now? You talked about good builds? How do I make one?
Cut to the chase, a good hipfire build is defined by having a laser sight and low length and weight. Length and weight are both stats on your gun that are affected by what attachments you are running, and you wanna minimize these two whenever possible (for all builds!) as weight decreases hipfire accuracy, equip time, movement speed, and stamina, where as length only affects hip accuracy and equip time. An example of a good hipfire build, say for the Crossvec (KRISS Vector) is to remove the stock, put a laser sight, keep the iron sights, and put an extented barrel for more damage and penetration. This will result in very low hipfire spread, but bad accuracy when ADSing.

How spread and recoil works

Spread in this game isn't a flat value for all stances; when aiming you have the least spread whereas standing still without aiming is still accurate, slow walking with C is pretty accurate, walking is somewhat accurate, running reduces your accuracy further and jumping RUINS your accuracy by making it 3-4 times worse. Don't jump when shooting, but you can still jump when juking. With a good hipfire build, everything will be accurate to a degree.

Recoil in this game is ALWAYS the same pattern for each gun, it's just that how severe it is depends on your attachments. You can therefor be really really good at the recoil control for each gun with your favorite build by practicing enough. Some guns also share recoil patterns, like most fully automatic weapons. Next time you spawn in, try going up to a wall and make sure the "Bullet Holes" setting is enabled in video, and just shoot. Don't move your mouse, just shoot and look at the pattern. Then try to control it as best you can. It doesn't have to be a tiny dot, it may be quite bad at the start, but put in practice and you will see results.

How to maximize damage, and win more fights

Now that you know how to minimize spread and control recoil, (or don't it doesn't really matter), we can talk about how to maximize your damage.


1. Good magazine choice
In this game, there are multiple mag choices for most weapons. You are usually presented the choice of JHP, FMJ, and AP magazines. JHP magazines do more damage but with less penetration whereas AP mags do the opposite, and FMJ are in the middle of the two and in my opinion usually the best choice. Not all weapons have FMJ mags as an option however. Armor penetration, or simply Penetration is a value which dictates how much of the enemy armor value is ignored. For example, if en enemy has heavy armor which gives you 80% damage reduction to the chest, and you shoot them once in the chest with 50% armor penetration (AP from now on), it will remove 50% of the armor value, in this case 80% down to 40%, meaning that however much damage you would do will be reduced by 40%. Therefor, having a higher AP on your gun can prove to deal more damage than a lower AP with more base damage.


2. Hitting headshots
This may seem obvious, but hitting headshots in this game is very beneficial as killing the enemy quick may not allow them to pull out whatever ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ resides in their inventory. Hitting someone in the chest will do 100% of base damage without armor, arms and legs 70%, and the head 200%, therefor double damage. With armor, however, it will do 100 % or 70 % or 200 % of whatever damage is calculated after armor and AP. However, not only does hitting someone in the head double the damage, it usually also increases damage due to the fact that most armors have less resistance on the helmet than everywhere else. For example, the combat armor has 60% vest protection and 40% helmet protection, meaning that hitting the head will do more than double that of hitting the chest.
This may seem too hard or too obvious, but this is seriously what was preventing me from being a good player, to a great player.


3. Having better movement
Having good movement can be the difference inbetween life and death. I don't reccomend you to jump around like a maniac when shooting as that will ruin your accuracy, but if you are caught off guard or are healing or in any situation where you are unable to return fire, spamming the jump key can make you much harder to hit. If you are in a situation to return fire, some good strafes to either direction can do wonders as long as you vary when you change direction and how long until you change again. Be unpredictable.


4. Using special items
Some items can give you an extreme advantage in a fight. For example, adrenaline can give you Artificial Health Points (AHP) which take 30% of the damage that would go to your HP and remove it from AHP instead. Another example, SCP-268, usually called "Hat", or "The hat" is a hat which, when worn, will give you invisibility for 15 seconds or until you equip an item or interact with anything that isn't picking something up. This item can be used to guarantee getting the jump on someone and as such having a large advantage. There are more items like this, but it would take all day to talk about them all. Just know you aren't limited to just your gun and medkits.

All of this will come from practice.

Strategy, decision making

Having a good plan rather than rushing in blindly can help you win more fights. For example, using adrenaline, throwing a grenade, flashbang, before running in can give you a leg up. The strategy to be used depends on the situation, and sometimes there is no strategy other than shoot and hope you hit more shots than the enemy does.

Decision making will come from experience, and being put in situations where you have to make a choice. For example, you and an enemy human turn a corner and spot each other. You both start shooting, and you feel like you have done more damage to him than he has to you. You have 60 hp left, and you hit him 4 times and he is running with a medkit. Should you run and medkit as well or push your advantage knowing that you probably have more health and that he is stuck using a medkit for 3 seconds, assuming he doesn't cancel it during the first second of the item being used, in which case you still have more health than him.
In this situation, you should push your advantage and go on the offensive.
I can't really tell you how to get better at decision making as it comes with experience, but this is a pretty common example which should help you take the right decisions more often.

Conclusion

Gunplay in SCP:SL is very different from other games. Instead of having to slow down to aim down your sights and shoot your opponent, running around with a laser sight on a very light and short weapon is the way to go. Remember that you shouldn't jump when shooting, practice your recoil, make a good build, go for headshots, choose the right magazine and you will be winning more fights.
All of what I have said in this guide will come from practice and experience, but I simply hope that this increases how fast you earn said experience and how far your practice gets you.

Feel free to leave comments; about something I missed in the guide, misinformation in the guide, your weapon builds, tips, and don't forget to rate up and give rewards so other people can see this guide if you found it useful!

[HALF LIGHT]

thank you for guide!

[trollos gaming]

"pick your battles and know your maps" and "things happening can be used to your advantage" are great tips I forgot to mention since they're just so engraved into my gamesense

[trollos gaming]

Tacticooler, what do you mean by chambered shots? Do you mean cocking the revolver?

[trollos gaming]

Big guy bill, i reccomend using FMJ mags for most guns that have them, like the E-11, until you know there's alot of enemy humans in which case take AP.

[Tacticooler]

what about chambered shots?

[Profesor Lewatywa]

W

[Profesor Lewatywa]

Nice Tutorial man

[peanut is my bae]

Pog, Id add that everything happening in the game can often be used to your advantage if you take a little time to think about how to use it to advantage, scps can be a great distraction for you to take out someone standing still shooting. If any enemy is standing still its easier to headshot, if theyre movement its best to try and hip-fire with a main weapon such as e11 followed by etiehr a crossver or fsp to finish them off

[Freddycat7(mackerel brothers)]

generally taking cover is a pretty good thing sound is honestly your best friend different classes have different footsteps this does include scps (only scp that has the same footsteps is 096) but u can tell if its shyguy by the crying and the wheeping ironsights are basically better then more scopes due to they have more zoom then a red dot or a holo ap is 100% better because your more likely to go up against another human class as someone who has over 1000 hours in the game there is still a lot to learn room design aiming for arms or legs does more damage if ur using jhp but in my opinion headshots are just clearly better with ap theres no problem with running away sometimes things can get to heated pick your battles and know ur maps

[2fast4u]

me = always ap (i only do ap bullets on all my guns its ap and never fmj am i doing it wrong)