.50 Cal and penetration

[slashdolo]

I remember in a really old chart Den made, the .50 Cal had max penetration, more so than any other gun in multiplayer. I've also seen various COD4 wikias list its penetration as "Very High/Armor Piercing."

My question is, what advantage does this serve in game, if any? And what does Deep Impact do to the Barrett?

[mannon]

Den can speak to the specifics but basically penetration does exactly what you would think, it lets you shoot through things. In particular thin walls and light cover. With high penetration it's possible to shoot through even thick walls or shoot through thin walls at steeper angles. (If you shoot a wall at a 45 degree angle instead of strait on then the bullet essentially has to pass through a lot more wall.)

It doesn't make the bullets do more damage except in doing more damage after passing through an object when compared to a weapon that does the same damage but has less penetration.

Deep Impact will allow bullets to both go through thicker things and retain more damage after penetrating.

According to Den the damage a bullet can do starts to drop off once it has penetrated an object, so the main use is for shooting someone right on the other side of their cover or a wall rather than shooting through your own cover and letting the damage drop all the way to your target.

And yes the damage drops even for weapons that do the same damage at any range.

If your enemies are out in the open without cover then it's an entirely mute point. But penetration is great for dealing with people that are behind cover or are hiding but don't know you see them.

This is why it's a bad idea to hide in corners to thin walled buildings. At least in W@W. There are many places where your shadow or parts of your character model will clip through the wall, giving your position away for anybody on the other side to pop you. Personally I would have regarded this as a bug, but I'm not the developer.

BTW nearly everything I've learned about penetration in CoD came from here, so hopefully I didn't get anything wrong. heh Have fun.

[Den]

Back then, like others, I thought that the variables "penetrateType" and "impactType" both had an effect on penetration. Only Penetrate Type does.

The Barrett sits in the Large Penetration category with many other big guns. It is, though, the only one with the "bullet_AP" Impact Type, which is just a really big bullet decal left on a wall.

Small loses lots of damage through just about everything (or doesn't penetrate at all).
Medium and Large share identical damage reduction through almost every material, but there may be some other difference, similar to Small being unable to penetrate certain materials.

Deep Impact will retain twice the amount of damage:
40 damage lowered to 8 will become 16 damage;
40 damage lowered to 30~ by flimsy sheet metal will become 39 damage.
Deep Impact will also allow the shot to penetrate at more than a 45° angle.

[slashdolo]

I see, I just assumed the Barrett was different in some way, like it basically had the Deep Impact perk WITHOUT Deep Impact actually being assigned if that makes sense.

[ssog]

Apr 24, 2009 14:37:47 GMT -5 mannon said:

According to Den the damage a bullet can do starts to drop off once it has penetrated an object, so the main use is for shooting someone right on the other side of their cover or a wall rather than shooting through your own cover and letting the damage drop all the way to your target.

Unless you set up your class to compensate. For instance- RPD + Grip (or Bando) + Stopping Power + Deep Impact is an unbelievable class on Killhouse on Hardcore- just chill on one side of the wooden ship and make life hell for anyone who even considers traveling through it. The best part is when people see bullets coming through and try to return fire- since they're unlikely to be using a high-damage, high penetration weapon, stopping power, *AND* deep impact on HC their bullets do nothing other than give me a better fix on where, exactly, they're located.

[imrlybord7]

ssog, that is just a horrible setup.
1. Don't use a grip in HC, except maybe on the M249.
2. Don't use a grip for wall spraying.
3. Either use an M249 with Stopping Power or an RPD with Double Tap (I would definitely go with the M249)

So basically make it M249 + Bando or Grip + SP + DI

[ssog]

Apr 25, 2009 10:29:27 GMT -5 imrlybord7 said:

ssog, that is just a horrible setup.
1. Don't use a grip in HC, except maybe on the M249.
2. Don't use a grip for wall spraying.
3. Either use an M249 with Stopping Power or an RPD with Double Tap (I would definitely go with the M249)

So basically make it M249 + Bando or Grip + SP + DI

You don't use the grip for the wall spraying, you use the grip because it makes the gun better when you're NOT wall spraying (or else you toss the grip and take Bandolier instead). The grip makes the RPD a much better gun at the mid-to-long ranges you're dealing with when you're cross-map spraying on Killhouse. The SAW is a *TERRIBLE* gun for habitual wall-spraying because it chews through its ammo far too fast, alerting the enemy to your presence and then letting them retaliate with impunity once you're either reloading or, worse, out entirely. And even if you're hitting with the SAW, you're almost always looking at it taking at least one more bullet- which is a bad thing, because it's impossible to ACCURATELY spray blindly through a wall. The fewer bullets required to kill the better. And DOUBLE TAP? Seriously? That gives you all of the drawbacks of the SAW (goodbye, ammo) and none of the benefits (goodbye, manageable recoil).

I don't have anything against the SAW, the Gripped SAW, or Double Tap. In fact, SAW + Grip + DT + Steady Aim is far and away my favorite hardcore class (it's like the bastard child of a P90, an M4, and an RPD). It's just not a wall-spraying class. I have a class called "Killhouse" that is just the RPD + Grip + Stopping Power + Deep Impact, and it only comes out for Hardcore Killhouse (although when I get bored I'll sometimes swap out Deep Impact for Martyrdom or Steady Aim and take it for a spin in SC, and it's also proven very useful for blind wall-spraying in Vacant, too). Literally all I do is stand at one end of the wooden ship and periodically sweep it clear of any interlopers. It's a wallsprayer's dream.

[imrlybord7]

Why in the world would you need the slight recoil decrease of a grip on a one shot kill weapon? And with the SAW you will be putting out so many more bullets that even with that one extra bullet, you will still be killing faster. Although I can see where you are coming from with the whole high ROF = alerting enemy, I think the pro outweighs the con there. And DT on the RPD doesn't fire as fast as the SAW (less ammo use) but greatly increases its damage output.
Anyway, even at 923 RPM, that 100 round belt is still going to last quite a while with the SAW.
And still, SP on the RPD is unnecessary. DI is much more important for a 40-40 weapon. SP should really only be used on the M249 since its a 30-30 weapon, so even the slightest damage reduction makes it a two shot kill.

[ssog]

Apr 26, 2009 2:02:27 GMT -5 imrlybord7 said:

Why in the world would you need the slight recoil decrease of a grip on a one shot kill weapon? And with the SAW you will be putting out so many more bullets that even with that one extra bullet, you will still be killing faster. Although I can see where you are coming from with the whole high ROF = alerting enemy, I think the pro outweighs the con there. And DT on the RPD doesn't fire as fast as the SAW (less ammo use) but greatly increases its damage output.
Anyway, even at 923 RPM, that 100 round belt is still going to last quite a while with the SAW.
And still, SP on the RPD is unnecessary. DI is much more important for a 40-40 weapon. SP should really only be used on the M249 since its a 30-30 weapon, so even the slightest damage reduction makes it a two shot kill.

You put the grip on a 1-shot weapon because when you're penetrating 3 walls and shooting the entire length of killhouse it stops being a 1-shot weapon in a hurry.

I really don't think you understand how I am using this class. I'm standing on one end of the wooden ship and firing blindly through three plywood walls. The bullet damage is decreased by every wall it goes through, and as soon as it penetrates the first wall, the damage *ALSO* starts decreasing with distance traveled. While I might be dealing 40 damage before I hit the first wall, I'm dealing significantly less by the time the bullet travels through the entire ship and starts hitting enemies back in the other spawn. Stopping Power lets me get occasional 1-shot kills, and easy 2-shot kills. Without SP, we're looking at an extra shot per kill- and an extra shot is a tough proposition because you're literally firing blind. It's not a matter of holding your crosshairs over the enemy, it's a matter of holding your crosshairs over a blank and unremarkable stretch of wall that the enemy is hiding behind, so anything that reduces the number of shots required is INVALUABLE (which applies to both the Grip *and* SP). Deep Impact isn't enough on its own for that kind of extreme penetration- SP makes a noticeable impact, even on a 40-damage weapon in HC.

The SAW is capable of killing, but it requires extra bullets, and once again you're firing blind, so "one extra bullet" is a seriously big deal. And why would anyone put DT on the RPD? Yes, it increases damage output, but not as much as Stopping Power does, and it increases bullet expenditure and recoil in the process. Unless a gun is already a 1-shot kill (and when you're doing some extreme wallspraying with the RPD, it's *NOT* a 1-shot kill, even in HC), DT is inferior to SP.

Another advantage of the grip on a 1-hit-kill weapon that doesn't apply to this scenario at all is that it lets you "aim on the fly". If I'm using my gripped SAW in HC and I see some movement at extreme range, rather than trying to line up a difficult shot I can just pull up the sights, start firing, and sweep my crosshairs over where I saw the movement. The grip gets the recoil under control so you can deliver a straight line of bullets across wherever the enemy is hiding. It's a bit wasteful, ammo-wise, but it's very easy, effective, and significantly quicker than any other method. But that's not why I have the grip on the RPD in my Killhouse class.

[imrlybord7]

Point taken, although I still definitely believe that the SAW would be a better choice. It just fills the air with so many more bullets, and like you said, you are blind firing. I would say that there's probably a higher chance of hitting 4 bullets with the SAW than 3 with the RPD.

One thing I forgot about was the range reduction after penetration.