Bullet velocity?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by AllRoundGoodGuy, Sep 29, 2016.

  1. AllRoundGoodGuy

    I was wondering why the bullet velocities in-game are so low when compared to rl weapons. Take a standard M16. It's bullet velocity is around 2,800 fps. Granted, this is only one assault rifle, but when compared to the standard NC BASR, it is around twice it's velocity. The bolt driver has around 1,000 fps (give or take) and that still is much faster than carbines.

    Now I am not asking for any change or anything like that, but it has just gotten me curious.

    Not to mention what effect this would have on the vs lol
  2. Liewec123

    its a game and needs to be balanced as a game, someone had a similar question a while ago about Underbarrel Grenade launchers,
    in RL they have a very very long range and a velocity similar to that of PS2 sniper rifles. (video)
    things shouldn't be balanced to be equal to their RL counterparts.

    if guns had real life velocities then there would be no balancing, no skill, no leading targets, everything would be borderline hitscan.
    just point and click.

    TL;DR its a game that requires balance, and velocity is a balancing factor :)
    • Up x 4
  3. Ryme_Intrinseca

    Probably the main factor is the very short ranges of engagement in this game. 100m would be considered a very long engagement with an AR in game, but IRL you'd have effective fire out to 500m or more.

    2,800 (m/s presumably rather than FPS - unless you have one hell of a rig!) would be pretty much hitscan within 100m. The much lower velocities in the game mean you still have to lead a little at the ranges weapons are actually used at, adding an aspect of skill that most players appreciate.
    • Up x 8
  4. AllRoundGoodGuy

    Thank you all for your input :)
  5. Dualice

    That being said the velocities of certain weapons are flat out pants for what they're meant for. The no-scope-sway semi-auto sniper rifles (KSR-35/Phantom/Impetus), for instance.
    • Up x 2
  6. Jake the Dog

    I still like the idea of high velocity ingame.
  7. Gundem

    It's called Range Compression, and basically boils down to(As others have commented) the ranges in PS2 are much shorter then in real life, so weapon velocity is toned down to compensate.

    Of course it's not conducive to realism-fanatics, but a necessary evil.
    • Up x 2
  8. Ryme_Intrinseca

    I feel with the KSR there's something else wrong, like the hit detection is a bit off somehow. Not had the same issue with guns like the Vandal with similar velocity etc.
  9. MajiinBuu

    Because nanites ;)
    • Up x 1
  10. Iridar51

    There's also an issue with aerodynamics. In real life bullets slow down considerably over time, while in PS2 they're always at constant velocity. So overall travel time is probably comparable.
    • Up x 1
  11. Ryme_Intrinseca

    I've just realized op was talking about feet per second. Id never heard of this oldy worldy unit and thought it was a typo. Ps2 velocities are in m/s so there's actually not so much of a difference with RL. 2,800 fps is 861.5 m/s.
    • Up x 1
  12. ColonelChingles

    You think it's bad for bullets... tank shells are ridiculously slow in PS2.

    In PS2, the Prowler's 120mm AP dart moves at 250m/s. A 120mm M829A3 APFSDS dart goes 1,555m/s (which is a tad slower than the earlier M829A2).

    So there are two things very wrong with tanks in PS2.

    First, tanks are extremely nerfed in terms of projectile velocity. The 120mm Prowler, for example, is only shooting at 16% of what it should be. This is very extreme compared to how much infantry weapons are reduced. The 7x65mm KSR-35 is only reduced to 63% (173 gr. 7x65R gets 795 m/s out of a muzzle compared to the KSR-35's 500m/s). That blows the "range compression" argument out of the water, because both tank and infantry weapons should feel the effects of "range compression" in the same way.

    Second, tanks end up shooting shells that are much slower than bullets. In PS2, a 120mm AP shell travels at half the speed of a 7x65mm sniper rifle bullet. But in real life it's almost the exact opposite, where a tank shell travels twice as fast as a sniper rifle bullet. Again, this simply shows how badly tanks have it in PS2.

    Graphically represented:

    [IMG]

    Anyone can look at that and see how out of whack the velocities are in-game.

    Really, to be balanced PS2 tank shells need to have their velocities quadrupled (to about 1,000 m/s) in order to be fair when compared to infantry small arms. Infantry should not be able to fire anything that moves faster than an AP projectile.
  13. Pikachu

    To prevent the game from turning into a sniper fest. Same reason why tanks have velocity of <300 and scopes have no higher zoom than 3x. Also AV secondary weapons had their drop increased time ago.

    In War Thunder tanks have real life velocities but their scopes are no more than 1.3x.
  14. Alexkruchev


    A big reason video games have lower MV aside from balance, is that the MV in real life may be 2800 fps, but the M16 starts losing it's projectile velocity the instant the bullet escapes the barrel, so that across a given distance it will lose a good bit of that velocity. Many developers (All I'm aware of) don't want to model this due to performance constraints.
  15. WTSherman

    Although considering engagement ranges in most video games, they could very easily get a "close enough" estimate by taking the average from the muzzle to about 200m.

    We'd probably need to raise the flight ceiling and flight speed of aircraft if we made those changes (and correspondingly buff dedicated AA weapons to make them usable against higher, faster aircraft), though in my opinion all of those would be good changes.

    Or if we wanted to be lazy about it, we could buff tank shells to about 400-700m/s and they still wouldn't be too much more of a threat to aircraft than they are now (ie still mostly only a threat if hovering or low and slow, extreme luck aside).
  16. Diggsano

    There is other Gravity in auraxis?...

    :D
  17. PyroPaul

    This is the problem that always occurs when comparing in game weapons to real life weapons.

    Simply said - You don't know the dimensions of the rounds, there for you can not directly compare each of them as if they where one in the same....

    Case in point:
    the M14 and the AK47 fire the same Caliber round - 7.62mm

    the M14 has a Muzzle Velocity of +900 m/s...
    the AK47 has a muzzle velocity of ~650 m/s...
  18. FieldMarshall

    Its for balance reasons.
  19. ColonelChingles

    In War Thunder tanks are from WWII or the early Cold War... in the 29th century, PS2 tanks should have much better equipment. Heck, I'd settle for 21st century tanks.

    There's nothing wrong with tanks targeting helicopters and other low-flying aircraft. Tankers practice against such targets in training:

    [IMG]

    And some tank HEAT shells are specially fused with an "air attack" mode where they turn into giant flak shells:

    [IMG]

    If a tank gets a hit on aircraft, that's really the fault of the pilot for hovering too close and too low. Can't really blame it on shell velocity, because the aircraft shouldn't have been in the firing arc of the tank in the first place!

    In a few TR weapons they specifically give you case lengths.

    The KSR-35 is said to be 7x65. The RAMS .50M is 12.7x75mm.

    In other cases they only give you the calibre, but they're close enough to IRL weapons that it's fairly easy to guess what they use.
    The NS-357 is a .357 snub-nosed revolver. The NS-44 and NS-44L are .44 revolvers. These will not be ridiculously long cartridges.
    The M12 Kobalt, M20 Basilisk, G30 Walker, and G40 Ranger all are pretty easy to figure out as it's in the name. Feels safe to assume that they're just analogues to current weapons of the same calibre. Same is true of the P2-120 and Titan-150 series.
    Things like the Skyguard are said to be 40mm.

    So it's actually pretty reasonable to figure out velocity and damage based on the roles of the weapons. I've done some basic calculations myself along these lines, and to be balanced PS2 should look something like this:

    [IMG]

    Pretty much, if a 20mm Basilisk shell is capped at 250 damage, then the .357 revolver should do 6 damage and a 120mm AP shell should do 33,680 damage. That would be balanced.
  20. ReptilePete

    Hi,
    I woz wonderink why I press a button in a gammon i my keybord and it is not human liefe. Iz can be their reazon to be true??? please do just explanashon of Enrish Languidge to explan why me so tarded. Fanks,