DeltaUMi

You are right about the AK series being nerfed due to complaints, but these complaints have substantial evidence in favor of nerfing the AK for realism. There is more to ballistics than just the caliber of the bullet. The AK-12 does not use the same ammunition as the other 7.62mm rifles in game. The AK-12, as you correctly stated, uses the 7.62x39mm, but the other rifles, the marksman and machineguns, use 7.62x51mm NATO and 7.62x54mm CSAT rounds. Notice the second number after "7.62", such as 39mm and 51mm. That number indicates the cartridge size, which is more or less proportional to the amount of propellant used to propel the bullet. As you probably noticed, the AK-12 round is substantial smaller in this department, as a result, these rounds have worst ballistics than the rounds used in the marksman rifles and machineguns. This is alright since the AK-12 is not supposed to be classed with the heavier machinegun and marksman rifles; the AK-12 is an assault rifle, which is the same class as the 5.56 and 6.5 rifles. PS: If you don't like the AK-12 anymore, try using the small caliber assault rifles. The AK-12 is a dated weapon anyway, hence why Russia converted their AKs to the smaller 5.45x39mm caliber and NATO uses the 5.56x45mm. These rounds have better ballistics and offer roughly the same amount of damage. I prefer the 5.8mm rifle myself in game.

I tested out the AKM and AK-12, which both use the 7.62x39 mm round that was said to have been changed in the same log as the ERCO and previous logs, in the Quick and Fun Projectile Tracing! scenario and the Arsenal. Both weapons still had obscenely high penetration, penetration in which these two rifles could be designated as DMRs, when I tested it in the Quick and Fun Projectile Tracing! In the Arsenal, the AKM and AK-12 had DMR level damage and the same ballistics as the DMRs. I've posted a thread about this with some penetration data from my tests before the devs posted the changelog regarding the 7.62x39 mm round. As of the moment of this post, I've found no change. So its safe to assume that the devs haven't implemented the changes in the changelog yet, which includes the ERCO problem. Any ideas on when they will implement these changes?

Yeah, I should had specify a bit more on what lethal and nonlethal meant. What I meant by nonlethal was that the path tracing line turned white, which I believe was when the bullet is traveling slow enough not to cause any damage. By lethal, I meant that the bullet was still traveling fast enough to cause damage. I'll fix the OP to specify this.

Intro To put this simply, the AK-12 and the AKM both have substantially more penetration than it should, much so that it has penetration value rivaling that of DMR's. I first found this discrepancy when I tested the AK 7.62 mm series in the Virtual Arsenal, discovering that they dealt similar damage to the designated marksman rifles. I found that the AK's could down a target with a Carrier Chest Rig with two clean shots to the torso will it took an assault rifle three to four clean shots to the same target on its torso. I expanded my investigation by downloading the Quick and fun projectile path tracing! scenario to test the penetration of the weapons, hypothesizing that the AK's penetration corresponded with its absurdly high damage for a rifle carrying merely a 7.62x39 mm ammunition. Testing Results These are the results from testing the AK series with various assault rifles and DMR's on the wood wall range in the Quick and fun projectile path tracing! scenario. The results are listed with the name, amount of wood walls penetrated, and then the lethality of the bullet after penetrating its last wall, where lethal means the bullet can still cause damage and where nonlethal means that the bullet no longer can cause damage. AK series AK-12 7.62x39 mm 10 walls / lethal AKM 7.62x39 mm 8 walls / lethal Assault Rifles TRG-21 5.56x45 mm 4 walls / lethal Mk20 5.56x45 mm 4 walls / lethal SPAR-16 5.56x45 mm 4 walls / nonlethal CAR-95 5.8x42 mm 6 walls / nonlethal MX 6.5x39 mm 5 walls / lethal Katiba 6.5x39 mm 5 walls / lethal Designated Marksman Rifles Mk-1 EMR 7.62x51 mm 11 walls / nonlethal Mk14 7.62x51 mm 10 walls / nonlethal Mk18 7.62x51 mm 9 walls / lethal SPAR-17 7.62x51 mm 10 walls / nonlethal Rahim 7.62x54 mm 10 walls / lethal Note: I also did some rough testing with the two AK's and the Rahim on the porta potty range to see if the material effected the relative penetration of the weapons, and the result was that it did not. I encourage anyone reading this to repeat this test to corroborate this data. As clearly shown by the data, the AK-12 and AKM, though assault rifles, has a penetration better than most DMR's. Conclusion The AK-12 and the AKM having DMR penetration is probably an unknown mistake on the devs part. It is quite obvious that the AK-12 and AKM should have lower penetration than the DMR's for two reasons. The AK-12 and AKM have shorter barrels than the DMR's and its 7.62 ammunition has a smaller cartridge with its 39 mm cartridge versus the DMR round's 51 mm and 54 mm cartridges. These two reasons result in less energy in the bullet when fired from these AK's; as a result, lower penetration. In fact, the AK-12 and AKM should be corrected to have lower penetration than the 5.56mm assault rifles, as it is known through multiple real life tests that the AK rounds have worse ballistics than NATO 5.56 rounds. It should also be remembered that the size of the NATO catridge to the bullet is much larger than the AK rounds, which also results in less energy in the AK round relative to other rounds when fired which of course means lower penetration. With all these facts, the AK-12 and AKM in Arma III have absurdly more penetration than it actually does in real life, most likely resulting the discrepancy I originally found in the damage from the AK series.

I don't think the DLC's are pay to win at all. There are ways to access DLC weaponry on multiplayer servers. Besides, some of the best rifles in my opinion are not DLC, such as the Mk 20 and Zafir. Besides, regarding the purchase of DLC, I just wait until a sale to make the most of my money.

I'm quite sure there is a mod out there you can use to test this. I remember a mod that registers the amount of damage you dealt to another person. Testing this would be simple; just compare the damage values of the first and second shots on a person.

I managed to clock in 538 hours so far over the past year and a half.