Bullet velocity?

Sure I know what "balance" means. Balance simply describes the status of a game when the components of that game are fulfilling their correct roles. It's a sliding scale with no exact definition, to be sure. There are people who believe that "balance" means that a single infantryman should be able to handily destroy a one-man ESF or a two-man MBT. I think those people are silly.

In my idea of "balance", PS2 would behave roughly like a combined arms war game. That dynamic currently does not exist, as infantry are essentially the core of everything in PS2. This is because PS2 is not a balanced game, where infantry should run in terror against tanks and be begging for air support.

Balance is when you can look at something and say, "Well, that makes sense." And looking at a situation where a tiny 11mm bullet does twice as much damage as a 40mm shell (or more damage than a 75mm shell) completely fails that test and is therefore not balanced. A situation where a tank shoots a shell that moves slower than a sniper rifle bullet makes no sense at all and is therefore not balanced.

I mean what other metric can there be for determining "balance" other than comparison to IRL roles? Anything else would be completely arbitrary and have no basis in anything.

IRL, War isn't meant to be "fun". War is about kicking the teeth out of your opponent and then kicking his sides while he is down and making sure the bastard never even thinks about getting up again.

Balance takes a while to form, but it can be made based on other game's experiences with similar concepts, player feedback and recorded statistics regarding the specified demographic. But if we based stuff on real life, then we'd just carpet bomb the whole danm place with supersonic stealth B2's loaded with full nuclear warheads and the entire planet would become a giant parking lot.

But honestly, that doesn't seem like a whole lot of fun to me.

That's called a desk job.

Wikipedia's article on the history of the English language actually does a very good job of explaining why the language is so screwed up in its first four paragraphs. (The first one is just a sentence so it's more like three paragraphs.)

That's not a description of PS2? To me it sounds like what PS2 ought to be like, with the total might of your faction unleashed on others to sweep them from continents.

Certainly you can't be foolish enough to think that's how we fight wars in real life? I mean why bother with the Army, Navy, or 90% of the Air Force if all we need are a few (subsonic, not supersonic) B2's! You must be a genius, because that would cut our national defence spending considerably.

The truth is that IRL is surprisingly balanced. We have infantry IRL. We have tanks IRL. We have aircraft IRL. None of these things can win wars by themselves, and all of these things are needed. Does that mean a rifleman is equal to a tank or aircraft? Heck no. But that's still fine, because as weak as riflemen are, they're still needed.

PS2, on the other hand, is very poorly balanced. Just look at Server Smashes, where all you need are infantry and a few rocketpod ESFs to win. You can see the lack of balance because none of the other units are necessary to win a war, unlike real life.

This is why improving vehicles and making them perform closer to IRL standards versus infantry would absolutely improve the game and make it balanced.

Even if you have caliber and length, it is not enough to determine and identify the behavior or attributes of a round fired.


Lets again compare 2 ammunition types.
the .222 'Extra Long'
5.7mm x 28mm.
muzzle velocity ~320 m/s

and the FN Five-seveN
5.7mm x 28mm
muzzle velocity ~710 m/s

the difference?
the .222 extra long has no bottleneck



but the HK 5.7 on the other hand, does.


This means more powder - and thus more power - can be put behind the HK 5.7 despite the caliber and length between both rounds being completely identical.

You don't know the dimensions, materials, or properties of the rounds fired - there for you can not do direct comparisons between real world weapons and in game weapons based off of just their caliber alone. Hence why these comparisons always fail.

That's an absurd position.

Can I predict the exact velocity of rounds based on dimensions? Sure, I agree that it's not likely. I mean just within a single type of cartridge you can get different muzzle velocities with identical dimensions (say 55 gr. and 62 gr. 5.56x45). And going further, even with virtually identical components you will likely get a degree in variation of muzzle velocity simply due to differences in ignition.

But to simply say that all comparisons would fail because of relatively small variations misses the greater point, that you absolutely can expect certain velocities given dimensions, especially if you are comparing the relative sizes of rounds.

That is to say, unless PS2 tank shells are pencil thin and PS2 rifle cartridges are shaped like pancakes, it is absolutely indefensible that any sort of rifle rounds would travel faster than an APFSDS dart.

But by all means. I invite you to come up with a reasonably logical scenario where a 7x65 rifle cartridge produces a bullet that travels twice as fast as a 120mm APFSDS dart.

This is why these comparisons just simply don't work - a lack of understanding between what is being fired coupled with a metric ton of assumptions create the illusion that What is happening in the game is horrendiously unrealistic when in reality that could be the furthest thing from the truth.

For instance - the Prowler's 120mm AP round fires (presumably) an APCBC shot.
This conclusion comes from the fact that in the game the AP round has an effective splash radius of ~1m, meaning that it has an explosive filler. Because APFSDS munitions are inert (being solid metal rod and all) it is impossible to compare the Prowler's AP to an APFSDS fired from an Abrams.

what's more - trying to do a direct comparison between the muzzle velocity of an APFSDS and AP is just wrong any ways.
the m829a3 APFSDS isn't a 120mm slug... it is a 20mm dart fitted to a shoe so it can be shot from 120mm gun...

Actually if we where to do an accurate comparison.

the 120mm Prowler gun would be firing full sized 120mm slugs... the last weapon to fire such a munition was the M58 mounted on the M103 Heavy Tank. The Muzzle Velocity for the AP rounds on that gun was clocked at ~1000 m/s

so the Projectile velocity by comparison is only 25% of what it 'should be'

However, if we take this a step further.... the M58 had a reload time of ~10 seconds.
the Prowler on the other hand has a reload time of only ~2.5 seconds.

So while the projectile is only going 1/4th it's comparative speed - it is also reloading 4 times faster then it should as well.

This is actually very much so incorrect.

the Muzzle Velocity of full caliber rounds tends to be much lower then that of the APFSDS rounds we use today (mostly because we are putting the power of a 120mm round behind a 20mm dart). many of the HEAT, HESH, and APCBC rounds fired by the early 90, 105, and 120mm munitions we had before we adopted teh APFSDS and FS-HEAT rounds we use today had Muzzle Velocities between 500 and 700 m/s. By comparison average Combat Rifle has a MV of 800-900 m/s

bullet drop wot dont fly in the air. ok

I'll just respond to this part because your analysis falls apart here.

This is the projectile that the Prowler and Vanguard uses in the game, taken from the game files:



It's pretty obvious that AP in PS2 is APFSDS, not some older projectile that you think it is. Therefore, as I have said already, it is inexcusable that a rifle bullet moves faster than an APFSDS dart.

Nice try though, I guess.

But why are bullet?

NO

Most rifles military issue rifles from the 1890s were better for range shooting than any of the guns in PS2.
Standard issue guns from the 1940 and 50s would be even better with the same range(its hillarious than an M1 Garande or M14 would dominate in a future space game.)
And modern high recoil rifles designed for sniping would be even better that real long range.

Essentially every military gun beyond a sub machine gun (suppressor or not) shoots almost flat out to 150 yards.

Aerodynamic drag would not start evening it out until 500 plus with most weapons.

... Like others have said, nobody tried to pursue realism in PS2, and it would be a stupid thing to do. Engagement range has been forcibly compressed, that's why weapons have lower velocity. What would realistic velocity accomplish? All weapons would be hitscan, like in CS, effectively dumbing down the game. No thanks.

And what is the Dimensions of that? What size is that compared to the size of the model of the Tank?

Again you're working off of assumptions - It looks like something you know there for the only possible thing it potentially could ever possibly be is what you think it is.

as far as you know - that could be a full caliber shell with folding fins



Or it could be that it is firing full sized Rocket Assisted rounds...
Considering that the TR Prowler AP round has a particle effect trail similar to those emitted by rockets-


And shares the same exact Projectile Model as the AV MANA Turret -





Again - you don't know the Composition, Dimensions, or Properties involved... there for you can not make a worth while comparison.

okay - a 120mm APFSDS round firing a Osmium Dart. Osmium is the densest stable material we have access to but is very difficult to machine due to its high melting point, hardness and brittle nature. This makes it harder to propel forward through munitions resulting in a significant lost in initial velocity when fired from a weapon. While a Depleted Uranium Dart could travel at +1500 m/s, an Osmium dart of the same size and shape would potentially only be traveling at a fraction of that.... but for comparison purposes because I personally don't want to do the math, we'll say it has a MV of 1000 m/s... it might be more, it might be less, but what ever.


Now. a 7x65 rifle round... shooting a low density material like Nickle or Aluminum and a long barrel to ensure that all of the powder burns and contributes to the velocity (3-4 foot barrel)... you could easily hit +2000 m/s muzzle velocities.

and yes - people have done just that - forged aluminium .45 caliber bullets and found that they have nearly double the velocity of a normal round.

Most ingame weapons do have an effective range of 500m. Once you account for bullet drop, you can consistently hit a target at 500m with most primary weapons semi-auto fire.

But unlike RL, bullets don't OHK. Auraxians being 10 times harder to kill makes the weapons effective range seem much, much shorter.

But that wasnt what I said you were wrong about.

Personally I would like guns that behaved more like real guns. I find it silly that my the 1889 Mauser that was a I have used for deer hunting, that was a general issue rifle in its day, is a far better sniper rifle anything in the game.
But its obvious the devs didnt like that.

Yes, I stand corrected on that issue. I checked with wikipedia and it seems that yes, bullets barely slow down over first few hunded meters, which is where PS2 engagements happen.

The great thing about sci-fi is that ANYTHING can be explained if you just use a bit of imagination. Who knows what kind of materials, implants and genetic modifications are used by soldiers hundreds of years in the future? Maybe their skin is thicker and more bullet resistant, so they have to use heavier bullets, which leads to lower velocity. As far as you know, your 1889 Mauser would shatter in pieces if you tried to fire a cartridge from PS2 era.

Either way, any argument about realism in computer games inevitably degrades into asinine.

Realistically, how fast should the bullets be?

It is not like they are firing real lead gunpowder bullets. TR uses nanite built bullets, with unknown composition, mass and propellant in an unknown environment. (what is the gravity and air density of Auraxis ?) It is quite plausible that they can't produce real bullets because they are stranded on another planet and lack the resources and industry to replicate large amounts and/or high quality gunpowder.

The NC use a hybrid system which has the same issues as TR. But their bullets are magnetically accelerated and are far faster than RL railguns of that size.

And VS I hear don't even use bullets. Supposedly they use LASERs or fire plasma. Their velocities aren't even 0.1% of what LASERs and plasma accelerators shoot at.

ITT:
Chingles reveals how he used to get called a POG and get hazed a lot, and how an infantry based shooter triggers him.

lol