How much damage do bullets do?

[metalcraze 290]

And at the guy I just replied too, would you die if I shot you 20 times in the hand with a 9mm pistol? Maybe your hand would be mush, but would you be dead?

Would you be able to fight?

This is my point. In arma anything from 1-3 shots to the hand = insta ragdoll death.

So how do you want the inability to fight for the rest of the mission depicted?

What's the difference if the result is exactly the same either way?

[Guest]

Richie would it make it better if you get the "incapacitated" message when you were shot in the leg or foot with a bullet (which in ArmA doesn't always "kill" you) and the same result?

As I said, being shot in the foot will not make any soldier just fall over and start crying. Let's see how you deal with it when you have 2 choices, fall over and bitch and then risk you and your buddies getting shot, or man the f*ck up and keep going until you are in a suitable location for treatment.

One soldier also shot 500 enemies during winter war 39-40. Keyword here is one.

Point being?

Also I tried destroying M1A2 with MG once. Fired 2000 bullets at it. It didn't explode or take any damage for that matter :rolleyes:

Honstly couldn't tell you if they updates Arma 2 at some point, when I played it, me and several users reported, (and proved), that tanks would explode after being repeatedly shot at by an MG.

---------- Post added at 13:04 ---------- Previous post was at 13:03 ----------

It's becoming apparent that you really have no clue Metalcraze. None whatsoever.

I here by leave as recommended by nimrod123.

[Droikka 1]

@ callin_banc, Exactly.

And at the guy I just replied too, would you die if I shot you 20 times in the hand with a 9mm pistol? Maybe your hand would be mush, but would you be dead?

This is my point. In arma anything from 1-3 shots to the hand = insta ragdoll death.

---------- Post added at 12:56 ---------- Previous post was at 12:55 ----------

Wow. You are a real piece of work.

hehe, can't handle the fact that you just proved what I told?

"You base your suggestions on tv-series and video games" "What, no I don't! Let me prove you wrong by citing a tv-series!"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyAFleshWound

[metalcraze 290]

As I said, being shot in the foot will not make any soldier just fall over and start crying. Let's see how you deal with it when you have 2 choices, fall over and bitch and then risk you and your buddies getting shot, or man the f*ck up and keep going until you are in a suitable location for treatment.

When you were shot in the foot in the previous games you had to crawl. People whined. BIS cut that out so you can walk now with a hole in your leg. Now you complain that any amount of bullets to the leg shouldn't stop a soldier from fighting.

All this just screams "the game is too hard make it arcade" despite you trying to hide it behind "realism".

Point being?

Why other soldiers never got 500 frags? If one did it it must be the norm for everybody else.

Honstly couldn't tell you if they updates Arma 2 at some point, when I played it, me and several users reported, (and proved), that tanks would explode after being repeatedly shot at by an MG.

That was the issue in 1.0 years ago.

Complaining about stuff that was fixed and is not there anymore is pointless.

[Droikka 1]

As I said, being shot in the foot will not make any soldier just fall over and start crying. Let's see how you deal with it when you have 2 choices, fall over and bitch and then risk you and your buddies getting shot, or man the f*ck up and keep going until you are in a suitable location for treatment.

Jesus christ, you're a ruseman. I give you 9/10, solely for the fact that you've got 1301 posts of ad hominem and movie knowledge, lol.

[keefehb 0]

This weapon is OP nerf this weapon.

Tanks are imba nerf tanks.

Buff choppers ffs petition to BIS.

Brace yourselves, its coming.

[rye1 21]

It's becoming apparent that you really have no clue Metalcraze. None whatsoever.

I thought that was just a logical equation when dealing with metalcraze. [insert argument full of leaks with no backing and misconceptions, oh yeah and throw in a few subtopics that weren't even mentioned then blame the other party].

One soldier got his upper bicep blown off by 7.62mm, kept fighting.

One soldier got shot in foot with 7.62mm, kept running, kept fighting.

One soldier got shot right through the chest, (bullet slipped behind armour), he didn't just crumple and die, he held on for hours before getting medical treatement, and despite losing most of his blood he survived for weeks after. Sadly he passed away, which really, really sucks, but unlike your slightly odd views, he didn't just crumple up and die.

You're right, people are trying to link pain and injury to performance which is perfectly fine but in reality there has been many scenarios of injury which still allowed for performance, but also scenarios which didn't. In Vietnam there was a case of a VC soldier being blown in half from a claymore and still pulling his trigger until bleeding out within around twenty to thirty seconds.

Bleeding would be a good solution to the problem you talk of "instant death", that be when you hit a certain damage value you die. For instance three to five shots in the hand as you mention. It would be nice if hit detection detected critical from non-critical anatomical structures and organ locations, but it wouldn't be applicable for real-time MP gameplay with the added problems of ping, lag, desync, so on and so on.

This is a very personal issue too. How do YOU deal with pain and injury? Well, that's you. Not the guy to your left or right. It's based on variables of pain tolerance, injury type, psychological perception, mechanism of injury. Of course there's cases where people literally fight through it, to say there's not and then say "you watch too many movies" just shows how naive that counter-argument is. I agree with Richie throughout.

If Droikka wants research, why doesn't he do it himself? Go to a database or to a main person within Wound Ballistics. Google it. Search for research data by such people as Dr Gary K. Roberts. If you have some amount of knowledge on the subject then you can expand it here, if you don't then it's the best place to start instead of just stating 'Yeah, movies.'

[froggyluv 2130]

Haha, gotta love the stories about the soldier getting his head blown off yet still retaining the tenacity to pull, spit and launch that final grenade with his last 2 good teeth!

Having never been shot by a bullet (a pellet gun yes), I can only imagine getting hit in a non-lethal area would be perhaps similar to breaking a hand/arm/leg/jaw in a fight -generally people keep fighting tho not always. As said above, would be great if every wound actually created a damage report with appropriate injury reaction reflecting this ie..get hit in the femoral artery of the leg, your gonna bleed out real soon/ superficial in&out wound -keep fighting with loss of aim etc....

[max power 21]

I read a paper by the FBI a while back. It was something about a study they conducted when they trying to establish the criteria for a new sidearm or something. At any rate, it was saying over and over that people can get shot without even realizing it, and what a person does immediately after he or she gets shot is largely up to them if the shot isn't a CNS hit. For game purposes, I wonder if after you have taken a certain amount of damage to non vital areas if it would be better to have some kind of degrading consciousness until you're completely incapacitated. It would give the player some time before he was taken out of play and would prevent him from running or after, or dying immediately from, having essentially his foot blown off.

[johncage 30]

i think those might be meth heads

[max power 21]

i think those might be meth heads

I guess you would have to read the study to find out.

[dnk 13]

Currently, A3's damage is similar to the 7.62NATO in ACE2: usually 1 shot, but sometimes 2 unless in an extremity. This is with an intermediate round (the 5.56 in ACE2 is a lot weaker and takes more than 1 hit often), but with all the advanced body armor of the next 25 years... I'm not feeling it to be a good balance or even realistic, and it means we're lacking wounded/downed soldiers and a proper wounded system, as in ACE and even vanilla A2. Obviously, the devs know how to implement this, and have in the last game, so why is it missing, or am I just missing something in the editor?

I dislike this in both iterations of the game in this respect. Wounding needs to be more common, and for A3 wounded animations for incapacitated soldiers should be included.

STATISTICS

Nah, I've read those studies years back. It's true: it takes time, especially with adrenaline, for a direct hit to really incapacitate someone, CNS aside. No personal experience, but the statistics are there.

Speaking of which, generally combat casualties are hugely skewed towards non-fatal, yet in the alpha it's more like 90% fatalities from shots.

[metalcraze 290]

I thought that was just a logical equation when dealing with metalcraze. [insert argument full of leaks with no backing and misconceptions, oh yeah and throw in a few subtopics that weren't even mentioned then blame the other party].

Or post 3 examples of soldiers taking a single hit with only 2 out of those being able to keep on fighting and then try to project that on every single soldier as an excuse to take a huge amount of damage to hands and feet and still keep on fighting.

Of course disregarding the fact that after getting hit into a leg or hand in ArmA3 you often just start bleeding out instead of getting taken out of combat. And still able to fight, especially after a magical insta-heal medkit.

In that regard ArmA3 is even less harsh on you than real life on real soldiers so I fail to see the problem really?

[charliemilk 10]

So I think some of you guys got a bit off topic but some guys did answer my question and even gave more info.

There appears to be a total amount of hit points that can be taken to zero (death) with either a single powerful well placed shot or a few limb shots.

Does anyone know if range effects the amount of damage? Or do bullets just disappear after a set distance or do they continues to arc down indefinitely until they hit an object?

Body armor should make a big difference. I think lugging round more weight makes you get out of breath and slow down to a walk sooner so body armor would be a big disadvantage to long treks and hot conditions. On the other hand if clearing a building it might absorb a few 9mm rounds or just 1 rifle round. And that would be the difference between life and death.

I doubt body armor will be used in all situations and people running round with 'health bars' blasting dozens of rounds into each other is not what any of the ARMA games are about. So we will not see it. I would think it will be there to compliment the array of tools you have to complete a set goal. Same as everyone not running round with flippers just in case they go for a swim.

[Beagle 684]

ArmA bullets are simulated until they impact...its the same for all projectiles in ArmA be it a pistol or a artillery round. Nonexplosive round will loose energy and effective hit value all the way no matter be it a pistol round or a Sabot from a tank. It was that way since OFP. Thats also the reason why ArmA games often get a bit laggy wehen therte are heavy firefights with lots auf automatic weppons...every single bulllets is tracked for its ballistic flight path intil it impatchs somewhere...even it that's 12km away.

[charliemilk 10]

ArmA bullets are simulated until they impact...its the same for all projectiles in ArmA be it a pistol or a artillery round. Nonexplosive round will loose energy and effective hit value all the way no matter be it a pistol round or a Sabot from a tank. It was that way since OFP.

Is there a graph/table from ARMA II that shows optimal range for each type of round etc? Would be good to know if any rounds can penetrate the glass of the armored jeep things and kill the driver if you are close enough.

[metalcraze 290]

ArmA bullets are simulated until they impact...its the same for all projectiles in ArmA be it a pistol or a artillery round. Nonexplosive round will loose energy and effective hit value all the way no matter be it a pistol round or a Sabot from a tank. It was that way since OFP. Thats also the reason why ArmA games often get a bit laggy wehen therte are heavy firefights with lots auf automatic weppons...every single bulllets is tracked for its ballistic flight path intil it impatchs somewhere...even it that's 12km away.

It's more than just impact. Bullets also penetrate and get deflected by a material they penetrate. Bullets of different caliber penetrate differently. They also ricochet from ground and objects.

With 7.62 I was able to shoot a soldier through a car with bullets entering through one car door and exiting through the opposite. They also lost some velocity during this (it took 3 hits to kill him). Overall there is a really great simulation of ballistics, I doubt any other game can boast with this amount of detail.

[Beagle 684]

the friction coefficient was changed multiple times, so no, no actual table I know of. But you can say that the lethality of 5.6x45 did drop significantly beyond 200m against body armour and beyound 500m you stood a good chance to survive a 7.62x51

[charliemilk 10]

While we are talking about bullets, When I was using a standard automatic rifle with a red circle/dot (sorry I don't know name) and shooting out to about 300/400 meters I could not see where my rounds were landing. Which is probably realistic, if not using a magnification scope should I be trying to get my hands on 'tracer rounds' so I can see where my rounds are going. I'm not 100% sure but think only a couple of the guns use the tracer rounds?

[claus.valca 0]

While we are talking about bullets, When I was using a standard automatic rifle with a red circle/dot (sorry I don't know name) and shooting out to about 300/400 meters I could not see where my rounds were landing. Which is probably realistic, if not using a magnification scope should I be trying to get my hands on 'tracer rounds' so I can see where my rounds are going. I'm not 100% sure but think only a couple of the guns use the tracer rounds?

Most of the weapons have two different magazine types. Those loaded with tracer rounds and those without. The magazines with tracers seem to be loaded entirely with tracers. The magazines without tracers have the last 4 rounds as tracers, so you know when you are running out. From what I've seen it appears the tracers burn out after around 300m or so.

[maturin 12]

It's more than just impact. Bullets also penetrate and get deflected by a material they penetrate. Bullets of different caliber penetrate differently. They also ricochet from ground and objects.

With 7.62 I was able to shoot a soldier through a car with bullets entering through one car door and exiting through the opposite. They also lost some velocity during this (it took 3 hits to kill him). Overall there is a really great simulation of ballistics, I doubt any other game can boast with this amount of detail.

At the same time though, the requirement for two additional bullets, required by simple mathematics, just screams gaminess.

A heavy element of randomness is needed, and badly. It doesn't matter how slow those bullets are going. If one hits in the right place, it is a kill shot. Similarly, a 7.62x39 to the torso might fail to jaw and just pencil through the lung tissue, giving the victim an hour or two to jog to a med tent before he becomes unable to breathe.

The same goes for damage to vehicles.

If I go on and on about this, it's because it is so damn easy to implement. Every shitty RPG in the world knows how to make a sword do D6+2 damage. Why can't shooters?

[rye1 21]

At the same time though, the requirement for two additional bullets, required by simple mathematics, just screams gaminess.

A heavy element of randomness is needed, and badly. It doesn't matter how slow those bullets are going. If one hits in the right place, it is a kill shot. Similarly, a 7.62x39 to the torso might fail to jaw and just pencil through the lung tissue, giving the victim an hour or two to jog to a med tent before he becomes unable to breathe

That's the exact point, hits in the right place. Hit detection, how has it changed from A2-A3?

If you're comparing it to some gradient of reality then some people say velocity equals wounding ability, which I believe is wrong. They'd therefore go by that logic and say the less velocity, the less of a wound. This isn't true either. Some rounds used by LE are lower velocity and fragment virtually on impact, "shallow wounds", which are known to be very painful and debilitating, in fact one of the best at "taking someone down." There's more variables than simply velocity but as you said simple mathematics is required for implementation otherwise you'll end up with a very laggy calculation; shoot him, dies 5 seconds after he was supposed to.

In any case 'randomness' is a task too. What are they basing it on? Anatomical hit location, a whole new medical system? What you're asking for then would be more like a mod, you talk about breathing problems - that's a tonne more 'medical' than what's currently in game. He'd have a pneumothorax and he would have difficulty breathing straight away, that's the only problem to randomness there.

[maturin 12]

What is easy to implement is instead of having bullets that do 20 damage at a certain velocity, make bullets that do 20 damage +/- D12 damage. That is a calculation that is essentially instantaneous, done in RPGs the world over. On top of the basic locational system we already have, it models by abstraction such vagaries as body armor coverage, shot placement inside the torso, yawing and fragmentation, individual responses to pain and trauma, etc. It means that even ricocheting or penetrating rounds can be deadly, while direct hits at close range can be survivable if you're lucky. With the result that people won't act so sanguine in long-range engagements, nor will they double-tap their enemies and mechanically look for the next target.

[Gnalvl 1]

Recently, I measured the total area of permanent cavities in Fackler's wound profiles as square centimeters. Damage within the first 20cm was counted for 100%, while damage between 20-30cm depth was counted for only 25% since this it's outside the average depth of the human torso. The results were as follows:

5.56 no frag - 88cm (9)

7.62x39 fmj - 113cm (11)

5.45x39 fmj - 149cm (15)

7.62x51 fmj - 181cm (18)

5.56 with frag - 386cm (38)

6.8 SPC - 795cm (79)

7.62 otm - 1088cm (108)

I chopped a decimal off in the parentheses to give an idea of what it'd look like on a 100-ish point scale like most games use. I also did some calculations counting temporary cavity as 10% extra damage within the 20cm mark and 2.5% between the 20 and 30cm mark, but since most bullets deal permanent and temporary damage in equal proportions, it made little difference and I discarded them. The only exception was 5.45x39, which suddenly looked just as damaging as 7.62x51mm using the added temporary numbers, but since temporary damage is not a confirmed factor in incapacitation, why go with calculations which yield entirely identical results except artificially boosting a single caliber? It's not like the permanent-only calculations don't show a strong advantage in the round's early yaw, so I stuck with those.

Regardless of how the damage gets calculated, I think generally in a good damage system, the caliber should perform in propertion to these values. In other words, a 5.56mm which fragments properly should be twice as likely to drop the enemy as a 7.62x51 FMJ, and a 7.62x51fmj should be twice as likely to drop the enemy as a 7.62x39mm or 5.56 through-and-through. On that note, the ranges at which a 5.56 round either fragments or doesn't should be based on the weapon's barrel length, the distance of the shot, and ammo type.

Beyond that, there's a few factors I think would be important in perfecting Arma 3's damage system:

1) Precise Center Mass Hit Detection - damage should be scaled based on how precisely center-of-mass it hits. By extension, this means that the lethal hitzone in the chest will vary based on the power of the round - maybe a weaker bullet would need to hit a center area the size of a golf ball, while a more powerful one could hit in a center mass area the size of a baseball.

2) Non-Instant Incapacitation - IRL, shots which don't hit the brain or base of the spine have no guarantee to stop an enemy instantaneously. Therefore, the time it take for an enemy to drop from a lethal non-head wounds should be randomized to a degree. Even if it only takes 1-2 extra seconds for the enemy to drop after a lethal shot, this makes a big difference.

Basically, the typical mentality of FPS is "as long as I can round the corner and put 5-6 bullets in the other guy first, he'll die before he can kill me and I win". If the enemy no longer stops the milisecond the server recognizes the lethal shot, then he might use the extra time to shoot you back. Hence, unrealistic rambo-style twitch run-n-gun play becomes far more risky, far less glamorous and practical.

Basically, there should be a chance to bleed to death, or bleed till you feint or go into shock, or simply go into shock from tissue and nervouse system damage, getting hit in a large number of places, but those methods of incapacitation should take place over the course of anywhere from miliseconds to minutes, depending on the caliber/ammo-type of the bullet, the placement, player health, and the main subject of my next point:

3) Randomization - The human body doesn't always react to being shot the same way, and bullets don't alway react to piercing human tissue the same way. IRL every bullet from the same factory batch of ammo doesn't perform absolutely identically, and due to random variances in their spin and yaw cycle, they won't always fragment, expand, or yaw properly in the enemy's body. Combined with the inconsistancy of human physiology and human emotions, there will always be an element of uncertainty to terminal ballistics.

More damaging bullets should have a higher chance to incapacitate more quickly, but there should always be a range of possible results.

[lugiahua 26]

actually, people died from getting shot in the extremities all the time

in Vietnam War alone, about 2,500 US soldiers died from nothing but extremities injuries.

another research concluded that 9% of combat death result from extremities bleeding, hence called "the most preventable death" by TCCC courses.

http://mhs.osd.mil/Libraries/120917_TCCC_Course_Materials/020401-Intro-to-TCCC-IG-120917.pdf