How does bullet penetration work?

Learn how CS:GO handles world bullet penetration (or "wallbanging").

The Basics

Bullet Penetration (or "wallbanging") in CS:GO is when a bullet hits a wall or surface of an object, passes through that object, exits the other side and continues traveling.

Not all guns shoot projectiles that can penetrate and not all surfaces can be penetrated. If a bullet successfully penetrates, it will lose some of its power and do less damage after it exits the wall or object on the other side.

How much damage is lost and how far a bullet can penetrate all depend on the weapon, the distance traveled through the object and the materials of the surfaces penetrated. The further the bullet penetrates through the object the more power it will lose, and once a bullet has lost all of its power it will fail to penetrate and stop traveling.

Penetration Power

Each weapon has a different Penetration Power value which ranges from 0 to 300. A value of 0 means that that weapon will never penetrate any objects, while a value of 300 means it will penetrate harder surfaces for greater distances. The total number of surfaces any bullet can penetrate in a single flight is capped at 4.


The Penetration Power value for each weapon can be viewed in the in-game buy menu.

Surfaces and Materials

The surfaces of the objects you shoot and the materials they are made up of have a lot to do with how easy (or hard) it is to penetrate the object. Below is a short list of common materials and how easy they are to penetrate.

Material	Ease of Penetration
Glass	Very Easy
Cardboard	Very Easy
Metal Grate	Easy
Wood	Easy
Plaster	Average
Tile	Average
Metal	Hard
Concrete	Hard
Brick	Hard
Solid Metal	Very Hard

To see the raw numbers for all materials and their penetration value, see the file named

csgo\scripts\surfaceproperties_cs.txt

The entry you want to look for is "penetrationmodifier".

Examples

Remember that bullet penetration is related to a weapon's Penetration Power, the surface material the bullet passes through, and how far the bullet must travel to exit the object. When an object has a different entrance and exit surface material, the damage lost is calculated using the average resistance of the two.

Here is an example of how these three factors combine to determine whether a bullet penetrates a material (and how much power it loses in the process).

On the left is a weapon with Penetration Power 200, and on the right, a weapon with Penetration Power 100. In both cases, we start with a bullet that would have caused 50 damage.


The bullet loses some damage immediately upon making contact with the surface (the bullet with a lower Penetration Power loses more), and continues to lose damage as it travels through the material. When a bullet loses all of its damage, it fails to penetrate the material.

To test bullet penetration for yourself, open the console while playing on a private server (or offline with bots), and enter the following command: sv_showimpacts_penetration 1


When a bullet penetrates a surface, you will see a report including information about the type of surface penetrated, the distance the bullet traveled through the material, and the damage lost in the process.

You can increase the amount of time this information stays on the screen by changing sv_showimpacts_time

FAQ

Can all weapons penetrate?

All weapons with a Penetration Power greater than 0 have the capability of penetrating objects, and even weapons with low Penetration Power can travel short distances through objects (e.g., through the corners of boxes).

Why can I shoot through a box from one angle, but not another?

From certain angles a bullet needs to travel a longer distance to exit an object (e.g. from one side of a box to the far side of the box), and the longer it travels the more power it loses. If a bullet does not penetrate an object, it has lost all of its power mid-flight. Even if a bullet can penetrate an object from multiple angles, the resulting damage will impacted by how far it has traveled.

These two surfaces look similar, but I can shoot through one and not the other. What's happening?

Sometimes surface materials have a similar look, but are in fact different (e.g., plaster vs. concrete). To find out what surface material you are shooting, use the console command "sv_showimpacts_penetration 1" while on a private server or offline with bots.

[Bboy]

top

[McWhiffLaren 420]

Except cheater , their penetrations are 999999999999999

[**BRAINLESS** W KEY WALKBOT]

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[scoochie1337]

philip015 added this to his cheat and made it sooo much better

[1e1001]

real

[ORT]

𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙙 𝙈𝙀 - 𝙄'𝙡𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙙 𝙔𝙊𝙐

𝘼𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙈𝙀 - 𝙄'𝙡𝙡 𝘼𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙔𝙊𝙐

𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙉𝙆 𝙔𝙊𝙐

[Ray_01]

is good

[✪ prefire]

nice

[fubuki]

nice

[AeeN]

ty helped my alot