Lowering the damage of 7.62 NATO rifles was a BAD idea

@thehappybub said in Lowering the damage of 7.62 NATO rifles was a BAD idea:

It really boils down to this: in reality, a 7.62 round is preffered because it rips through most commonly-found cover. So what that SAPI plate won't stop it? ... it really doesn't matter when you're blasting people literally through walls.

5.56 will perform better against armor due to its high velocity, but once it hits a tree branch it loses a lot of its power. That's not really that helpful in reality.

At the ranges SS is played at, it matters more because 5.56 would very clearly outperform 7.62 on direct hits. What I would like to see in the game is implementation of realistic penetration for both rounds. A 7.62 should go through most everything that isn't a very solid wall. If you see an enemy through a window of some plaster building and they duck below it, you blasting that wall with a battle rifle should get you a kill. If that's how it worked, I would consider the rounds balanced as they have specific strengths.

Not being very knowledgeable about these sorts of details, I find this very interesting! Perhaps another great opportunity to further differentiate between weapons as you suggest.

@kalash-nicole That's way too many bullets. That's a higher TTK than CoD games...

I mean realistically, you can probably shoot a bunch of 7.62s into a steel SAPI plate and not have any penetration. But then again, this is where reality and testing don't really cross over. The plate covers a relatively small rectangle on the torso, leaving lots of spots open due to mobility constraints. Plus, taking a bunch of 7.62s to your chest plate will definitely break ribs and may just kill you from the blunt trauma to the lungs anyway.

Also 5.56 penetration can be seriously impeded at angles. All the tests are when considering perpendicular impacts. I wouldn't be surprised if 5.56 rounds fired at a 45 deg angle to a SAPI just bounced off.

I don't expect Ins:SS to model like the exact bullet physics and whatnot, I don't even expect completely realistic representation of armor. I just think it should reflect reality in some proportional way. That means I think:

Armor should only be applied to where plates would realistically be, not the whole carrier/flak jacket thing.

5.56 should 1-2 shot through heavy armor. It should have terrible penetration of materials.

7.62 should be like a 2-3 shot on heavy armor. It should have amazing penetration through most surfaces in the game, way more than it currently does.

@thehappybub A lot of what you're talking about boils down to velocity and weight. 7.62mm NATO is a heavy bullet and has a lot of inertia, that helps carry it through barriers like wood without dumping a lot of its energy. 5.56mm NATO by comparison is fairly light but very fast, that velocity helps when it comes to punching through armor, but it's light weight means it slows down very rapidly when moving through thicker materials.

Part of it is ammunition specific too. The US standard 5.56mm M855 round is semi-armor piercing, it has a lead core and a steel penetrator tip. It is specifically designed to penetrate infantry body armor. The 7.62mm M80 round by comparison is a normal FMJ design that hasn't changed much since the M-14 was the Army service rifle.

As per my gameplay, I would say currently aks74(which I assume 5.56) has no problem killing bots with 2/3shots on heavy armour and with g3, i get almost any enemy with 1 hit.
About range, I found aks74 is accurate upto 50mtrs while with g3 it was not that hard to kill any1 with 50mtrs+ range.

@thehappybub If the tradeoff is between damage through armor and damage through walls, people will pick armor piercing bullets every time. It might be balanced if 7.62 and 5.56 did the same damage to armor but 7.62 had better wallbang penetration, but even then 5.56 would probably still be used for its superior recoil and capacity

do you mean gud wall piercing ammo cannot 1shot kill heavy armour?

last edited by chraso

@cyoce if the 7.62 wall penetration was realistically portrayed, i.e. HEAVILY buffed from its current state, even if it performed worse than 5.56 against heavy armor, it would definitely be worth it. Penetration should also work for flesh. 7.62 rounds which hit unarmored parts of the body should really rip through the body and go through multiple enemies. as @MAA_Bunny mentioned, specific rounds with different cores obviously differ, but the general idea still stands (it'd be cool if NWI introduced a round variety but I feel like that will get too complicated).

I get the feeling that people think that the 7.62 is for some reason a "better" round and should therefore be stronger. It is a larger bullet, but the physics just doesn't translate like that in every situation. The reason both 5.56 and 7.62 are major rounds a variety of rifles are chambered in is because both are great rounds and excel at particular kinds of engagements.

Right now, people are treating 7.62 as an upgrade from a 5.56, which they shouldn't because they're more niche than they're portrayed in this game (any fps, really). You should feel like you're really using a completely different weapon when switching between the two chambered rounds. I think that there are different playstyles that suit this game and that some would better utilize 5.56 rounds and some 7.62 (with realistic mechanics).

@chraso said in Lowering the damage of 7.62 NATO rifles was a BAD idea:

do you mean gud wall piercing ammo cannot 1shot kill heavy armour?

Also yes, that's how it works.

last edited by thehappybub

@thehappybub said in Lowering the damage of 7.62 NATO rifles was a BAD idea:

I get the feeling that people think that the 7.62 is for some reason a "better" round and should therefore be stronger. It is a larger bullet, but the physics just doesn't translate like that in every situation.

Yup, if 7.62mm was objectively better in every situation, the US military wouldn't have stuck with 5.56mm for decades. The primary advantage to 7.62mm is it retains a lot more energy over long ranges, where at the lethality of 5.56mm falls off dramatically after about 300 yards. It's why 7.62mm has stuck around as a sniper cartridge and why rifles like the M-14 EBR and Mk.17 SCAR-H have become so popular in Afghanistan.

7.62mm also has better barrier penetration, which is another thing 5.56mm is generally poor at. It's actually why a lot of police tactical teams in the US went to 5.56 rifles, the round is less likely to penetrate a house wall and kill a neighbor than high velocity 9mm out of a sub-gun. Poor barrier performance is also why SOCOM and now (as of a few days ago) the USMC started using the Mk.318Mod0 round, which is specifically designed to be better at penetrating barriers than M855.

@thehappybub Unless you can rip through any cover, I don't think people will prioritize targets they can't see over targets who are shooting back. The reason people want 7.62 to deal better damage is that they're crap if they don't. A trade-off between player damage and wall damage? Maybe in specific situations. But add to that the (usually) 20-round mags, (usually) lower rate of fire, and (usually) higher kick, and you're looking at a downgraded weapon. And everything kills unarmored players so that's not much of a factor.

last edited by cyoce

@cyoce said in Lowering the damage of 7.62 NATO rifles was a BAD idea:

A trade-off between player damage and wall damage?

But as you said yourself, its not player damage its armor damage that gets a tradeoff. Keep in mind that I'm advocating for this change along with making heavy armor plates take up a realistic amount of space (i.e. the rectangle on the front and back of the torso).

People generally double-tap anyway, so in this proposed model, both calibers should get a kill on heavy armor in the span of that double-tap, maybe 7.62 might need an extra tap if both rounds hit smack center of the plate. The difference will be in engagement distance. Someone clearing rooms with a 5.56 should be dropping everyone easily, but it should be a pain in longer-range engagements. 7.62 should be more of a struggle indoors, but perform very nicely at longer ranges. I don't know if making 7.62 wall bang better would yeild these results, but I just think that's the feeling people should get when using the two calibers.

@thehappybub The problem with having one weapon damage unarmored more than the other, but reversing that dynamic against armor is that it completely lacks consistency. When you engage a player with a 7.62 weapon, it would be complete luck of the draw as to whether you'd be better off with 5.56 or 7.62. Guns should have consistent strengths and weaknesses so you can develop a coherent playstyle around them.

@cyoce for the purpose of simplicity I would even be more for having both rounds be equal against armor, but increasing the 7.62's wallbang. Then at least there would be some kind of differentiation. I just don't want to see 7.62 be better than 5.56 against armor because that's just not true.

Amen.. @thehappybub said it all right there... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

last edited by Hossfxr