Seattleite

Okay. Here's a different vent, to change the subject. Something I think we can all agree on, I hope. Have you ever had to deal with a moderator (and I'm not talking about anybody on this board, just to be clear) who thought they were above the community they moderated? You know the type. The ones who get offended when you communicate to them like they're an equal, or even just like a human being? The kind that thinks that just because they have a small, unpaid position on a website, that makes them better than the regular forumites? I don't understand how somebody could get so conceited from something so... Meaningless. And I see them on *well* over half the sites I frequent, and I've avoided joining sites just because their moderators are like that. I had one on [site Redacted] explode on me recently. Instant, permanent ban. All my threads nuked from high orbit. You could never tell I was a member of the site, because there's nothing left. Even my posts in other people's threads were deleted. I think they must have a quick delete button for that purpose or something. The ban note was "Do not insult or disrespect staff members.", with my post quoted afterwards. My post was directed at another forumite, who kept going on an off-topic argument after the moderator came in and told everybody to stop derailing the thread. You could clearly tell who it was directed at, because I had their post quoted. And my exact post was "You heard the dude. This conversation's over." That was my ENTIRE post. WHAT exactly in that is in any way insulting or disrespecting the staff members? That I referred to a moderator as "the dude"? Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were so full of yourself that you're offended by being referred to in a casual manner, like a member of the community. If you don't want that respect, that's fine. You can get less respect. [Name Redacted], you can go hang, and take your stupid cowboy avatar with you. EDIT: I probably shouldn't mention the site's name, or the moderator's name. So I've redacted those.

I agree with Epsilon. Let's change the subject, at least. This one probably won't go anywhere.

You mean when I brought up that the queen of incomprehensible gibberish has improved her typistry immensely in a short timespan, showing in doing so that anybody can type like an educated human being if they try? And then how I immediately attempted to end the conversation there, on a positive note? Yeah, funny about that, isn't it. What's even funnier is I'm probably going to get blamed for this if it gets out of control, even though I tried to terminate the conversation *before* it turned into a flame war.

No Ninja, no we don't. That's how you choose to frame the narrative so that you can look like you're the good guy here. We're tired of you being a selfish, lazy piece of shit in a public venue. We're tire of it in much the same way we'd be tired of it if you went around in train stations mumbling half-gibberish at the staff members and other passengers. And people like you, specifically, are the worst because you get angry that a very small percentage people you've inconvenienced are angry you've inconvenienced them. The bottom line is you are inconveniencing random strangers for no reason other than being a lazy shit. And yes, that pisses us off. And yes, we get spiteful and vindictive about it because it happens SO MUCH. And we're not going to be nice to you, and we're going to talk down to you because you're acting like a lunatic drunk in public, without even having the excuse of actually being a lunatic drunk. And you don't have to be perfect for us to be nice to you and your precious feelings, you just have to fucking TRY. And as long as you're not willing to try, you can just fucking deal with it.

Okay, calm down. I don't read all the posts on the site. I mostly stick to the threads I post in, and the threads for Ross's videos. And I don't own a console either. The only thing that makes me want a console is exclusives, and I'm not one to dump that much money to play a couple good games I can't find on PC. (I'd rather just buy a game for my friend who has the console. Lets me play it without buying a console, and he gets a free game out of the deal. It's what I'm doing for Bloodborne and The Last of Us.) This is more like Dark Souls. Sure, parrying is hugely effective, but just blocking will get you through encounters. It'll take longer, but it's less risky and works well against multiple opponents. And it has an advantage in parrying that Dark Souls doesn't, in that it's part of blocking. You can try for it, aim for the early part of the window, and if you mess up you've just ended up blocking instead. Also... I just noticed a couple things I failed to mention in the weapon listing post. Nothing worth going back for, though. The only two worth mentioning is the axe has an 85/15% block and 0.05s parry, and that animals behave radically differently from people. (Animals can have their attacks cancelled by hitting them during the animation, be stunned briefly by blocking, be knocked down by a parry and damaged by a perfect parry.) Okay, in a bit of a scramble due to a last-minute schedule change, but I should have a basic design document by Monday, and I'll post a Mediafire link. I can't be sure about that because I don't know *exactly* what the plan is on my end, so no promises, but Monday is when I'll aim for. EDIT: Still no title. I can't think of a good title. I'd like just to call it "Ashes in the Fall", but stealing a title from Rage Against the Machine doesn't feel right. EDIT 2: This will not be done by Monday, but I should have it by Wednesday*. *Valve Time.

Yeah, sorry, forgot about that. I guess I can include something similar. Well, if you have a console, all three souls games are available PS3, Bloodborne is on PS4, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 are on 360 as well. That's fine. Not every mechanic in a game has to be used by everybody, especially not in an RPG or shooter, of which this is both. Parrying is there for the people who are willing to use it, and if you don't like parrying, you can just block. The block percentages are pretty high, and if your weapon is sufficiently faster than theirs you can block their attacks and hit them before they can attack again just fine. Or you could take an offhand knife to block and attack at the same time.

1. Ninja, ever thought that maybe when we crack down on you, it's because we and a lot of other people have to read what you're writing, and you could save a lot of people many times more time and effort than it would take from you if you just typed like an educated member of society? You're the one being an ass here, to EVERYBODY who reads what you're writing. If you were parked in the middle of a city street, would I be an ass to tell you to move your vehicle, or would you be an ass for parking in the street and inconveniencing everybody going through there in the first place? 2. Ian, the ENTIRE POINT of grammar is to make sure you're understood clearly, and it's easy to read what you've written. People who can't take two seconds extra to type properly are selfish pieces of shit, because they clearly think the two seconds and tiny bit of effort they're saving are worth adding six seconds, a lot more effort and often times a headache to anybody who reads their post, and often times their post just not being read because it's such a pain in the ass to read. 3. I don't use autocorrect, personally. I get what it's there for, but for me I've always found it creates more problems than it solves. But spellcheck, I'll agree Chrome has the best I've seen on desktop. And Windows Phone has the best I've seen on mobile.

Well, I doubt the steel-reinforced concrete would cave in, but I can put blockades in the way easy. This is source, and barricades were common in the Half-Life series. And having to choose between breaking through with the flash-light (which could take a while, but you could see what you were doing), using a stronger melee weapon to get through faster (like the crowbar, which has the special side benefit of doing extra damage against inanimate objects as it is realistically the best tool for breaking down barricades) or trying to do it with your hand/knife/stock so you can keep your gun ready would make an interesting dilemma. Especially since you're making a LOT of noise doing this, and who knows what can hear you down there. (Crazy hobos, drug addict squatters, stray dogs, zombies? There's all of the above down there. And any of them could creep up on you in the dark.) A. That's for a perfect parry. Which if you remember, has an incredibly tight window but knocks the enemy down. B. Really, you should play Dark Souls before you talk about the length of the windows. I went in for Dark Souls 1 and 2 and checked the parry windows against the frame rate. The frame rate is 30fps, and the window for parrying is three frames (that's 0.1 seconds), four frames for the parrying dagger (0.133 seconds). In Dark Souls 2, the game runs at 60fps, and here's the entirety of the information on the parry windows there. The shortest window for weapon parry is 4 frames (that's 0.067 seconds) and the longest is 18 frames (that's 0.3 seconds). I was pretty much right on the money with the estimates earlier. And all of these are totally doable, and by playing the game you'll be able to see how doable they really are. (I'd recommend Dark Souls 1 over Dark Souls 2, the PC port for Dark Souls 2 has issues with some computers. Including mine.) http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Parry

Except that they're right, and you're wrong, so you'd just be making yourself look like a petty ass. Hey, here's an idea. If you don't like being corrected, make fewer mistakes. Then it won't happen so much.

You're lucky, Rarity. I don't get to play Bloodborne, so I'm doing another playthrough of Dark Souls instead.

Dyslexics are fine. It's when somebody has no mental problems and a highschool education and types like this (see below) that I have a problem with. Seriously, you TRY and tell me you can make out half of what this idiot's saying. ...I was going to link to Nicki Minaj's Twitter, but she's actually gotten a LOT better in the year since I checked. Must be all those people that made fun of her, that's good motivation. Okay, you know what, nevermind. Forget I said anything.

No, because I had a solid logical argument for it. "Cavitation" is what you keep bringing up, and "cavitation" is caused by the shockwave that occurs when kinetic energy is transferred into a flexible medium, and occurs whenever kinetic energy is transferred into one. And in a gunshot wound, the "cavitation" effect is also knows as the "temporary wound cavity". They call it that because it lasts less than a second before the tissue goes (mostly) back to normal. For another point as to why it isn't important, remember that it's not any different between delivery methods. You can take more energy than a bullet will ever transfer to you with very little injury. Go have somebody slap you as hard as they can. You just took a couple hundred joules to the face, the same as most gunshot wounds, and all you got was mild redness. It won't even bruise. Energy transfer clearly isn't the culprit here. And even if it was, your second source was still rubbish because the round he was comparing the 5.56 to actually causes MORE cavitation, not less. I CAN link to a source on that if you want to claim the 5.56 transfers more energy than the .30-06, but I'm pretty sure you know that already. The culprit is and can only be the bleeding hole through your body, and then what matters is the size of that hole. And the only ways to get a larger hole are to either use a wider bullet, make your bullet expand (similar result, different method), have it roll (which doesn't increase the size of the hole *that* much, a 5.56 tumbling is still smaller than a 9mm going through normally) or have it break into pieces (which I've already said is HUGELY effective and will reliably make a rifle round several times more damaging, but frangible rounds are illegal for both the civilian and military market). That's my logic. If that isn't enough for you, that's fine. But you don't need a source when all you're presenting is logic, not data. A source is of NO VALUE when you're not presenting data. Would I need a source if we were arguing about the products of eleven and fourteen, or would the math suffice? If you were throwing Pascal's Wager at me, and I explained the false premise it's made under, would I need somebody else saying it as well for it to count, or would the logic still hold solid? Some things just don't need a source. Sources are for data, not logic. You're NOT the first person I've had this debate with. I've read them before, and every single one of them was written under the assumption that energy transfer was responsible for stopping power. And sound like they're written by the company's marketing department, considering the complete lack of any criticism for the weapon or acknowledgement of its flaws. If you want me to give them a quick look over again, despite it being about the third time I've done so, then fine. I'll waste another couple hours of my time if it'll end this. I did look at your source. At least, I read the first half dozen posts from the top of each and moved on. They specifically mentioned the weapon have trouble with the 8-round magazines. Whether that's the weapon's fault or the magazine's fault isn't really relevant, because having a different magazine solves the problem either way. Well, how in the world am I supposed to know the exact models of firearms I never personally handled? And for what it's worth, I doubt it's not the fault of the weapon's design, considering that every one of these was a mechanical problem with the weapon. Except that last one, that one took bad ammunition, a crappy weapon *and* user error to happen the way it did. 1. I'm quite used to people getting a perfectly sound explanation of why I have decided to do things the way I do and deciding to flat ignore it and keep arguing from their perspective anyway. I've learned the hard way that a short, simple explanation of your intentions will satisfy nobody until they've already given up on trying to force you to do things their way. 2. They're really not unrealistic. I did the math instead of assigning random values for a reason. Every round of every calibre present in the game is 100% capable of performing that way in real life. ALL that's required is a manufacturer to have the same priorities as the in-game companies and that's how they will perform. The rounds are absolutely realistic within the context of the setting. 3. In fact, some manufacturers DO have the same priorities. There are rounds available for all of these weapons that are extremely stable and will almost never yaw. There's also pistol rounds loaded with overkill powder, pistol rounds built to be accurate at range, and of course pistol rounds loaded with overkill powder designed to be accurate at range. So every variety of rounds in-game does have a real-world equivalent that performs just like it. I intend to. Theft, framings, smuggling, sabotage, arson, assassination, bombings, there's a lot to go around. Granted, the different job types will be added in one at a time, but in the final version all of those will be in there. And a lot of the game is completely freeform, too. I'm not sure the overall size of the city, but it's canonically similar in size to Houston, so even at 1/30th scale it's going to be huge. (Good thing it's built off of Half-Life 2 and can have vehicles.) And the city also has a maze-like (sorry Ross) collection of interlinking underground networks you can navigate if you'd prefer to just do some exploring and treasure hunting. (Four of them, no less. The sewer, the subway, the catacombs and the natural cave formations are all extensive and all link into eachother.) And I think you should play Dark Souls before you say that. There's a very good PC release of the game, and the window for parrying in it is right in the same range as it is in my game. Plenty of people can parry in Dark Souls just fine (once they know which attacks can be parried and which can't... I never said the game was without flaws) and I think you'll find that, with some practice, you should be able to do it too. And if you're not willing to play the game, then I'll produce some links of people parrying in it, inside its tiny, tiny parry windows. And for the record, the 0.05s and smaller parry windows in this game are supposed to be extraordinarily difficult to pull off because having that short of a window needs to be a meaningful weakness to balance those weapons the way it's intended. The baseball bat would be an absolute power house if its block didn't suck and its parries weren't so hard to pull off (both realistic weaknesses of a baseball bat, by the way), and the flashlight needs to be a very weak weapon because the areas it's used in will be designed around that. Perfect parries in particular need to require extraordinary timing to pull off, because they pretty much guarantee victory when done successfully. The 5-6 seconds it'll take an enemy to get back into the fight after a perfect parry is longer than any enemy is going to survive.

8Gv0H-vPoDc

Okay. Personal pet peeve. Why does every third person on the internet type a brained damaged chimpanzee, or worse yet like Nicki Minaj? What in the hell do they TEACH kids in school, because basic scholastics certainly aren't on the fucking list.

That's NOT what I just said at all. I said I've already heard all his arguments and addressed them before on this page. You're sounding JUST like a creationist right now, pretending you're winning the argument because you repeat the same one over and over again until I get tired of refuting it. And it's pretty damned annoying. Nobody accepts Wikipedia as a source, and there's good reasons as to why. Anybody can add anything at any time, with no standards of notoriety, and it will not be found in time for it to not serve their purposes. I have more than once caught people editing a Wikipedia page to support their position right before linking to it. If you're going to use any of the citations there, fair enough, but link to them directly. Seriously, are you just using this source so you can try and win sympathy points with the audience we don't have when I shoot it down? 1. I haven't counted, but I can name 23 different firearms right now off the top of my head. You want a list, I'll give it to you. 2. Four of them. One AKM (no problems at all), one AR15, one Benelli M4 and my P220. 3. Only my P220. This is an issue with the magazine, not the weapon. I'm well aware of the issues with Sig's 8-round magazines. My specific weapon is a P220 Compact, it has a 6-round magazine, I never had this problem. I don't know the exact models, they weren't my guns. The first two were .50 AE, the third was a .357 and the fourth was a .50 AE as well. I only know that because I volunteered to load magazines for people back then, because it got me a better view and increased the chances I'd get to fire the weapon. (I was going out there from when I was seven to when I was 16. I didn't own my own gun until two years after I stopped going.) It's really... Not that bad, actually. I mean, for the pistols these requirements are insane, but the requirements for rifles weren't *that* bad. At least, by modern standards. They were pretty harsh in the late '60s, but were still doable. Rounds from a fixed test barrel are always more accurate than rounds fired by an actual shooter, especially since the trajectory will have been calculated precisely beforehand. From a fixed test barrel, most 7.62 NATO rounds will hit over half the time at a kilometre. Even rounds not really built for sharp shooting. It's the pistols that had a hell of a time with the range requirement due to the shape of the rounds. If they'd just been allowed to make them spitzers, they could have made it easy, but as it was they had to load rifle powder and stretch the definition of "mild steel" jacketing. As a side note, pistol springs have to get replaced a lot in this setting. And due to the lack of wear-reducing powder additives, you need to clean pistols more frequently as well. As for penetration, yes five metres of ballistics gel is a lot. But it's 10% ballistics gel. That's the weakest variety that sees any actual use, it's not inconceivable for a 7.62x51 FMJ to penetrate that deep. Most powerful available propellant and super-stable, extra long boat-tailed spitzer ammunition did the trick. For the pistols, though, it wasn't even that big of a challenge. What they did to meet the range requirement made them meet the penetration requirement without any further improvement. But for what it's worth, I did set these requirements specifically to justify the way damage was calculated in-game. Though at the time, it was a different game. It was a tabletop that was never made due to its mechanics being intolerably complex and a simpler tabletop being proposed shortly thereafter. And the reason I set it this way was that it allowed me to calculate the weapon's stats based on its case dimensions without having to find out all the specifics of how each manufactuers's rounds perform. See, I tried to do it the other way, but I quickly found out most of the things you'd like to know about a round are impossible to find solid data on, and when you do the data is tainted by extra variables such as the weapon it's fired from and the conditions under which it was fired. So I just said "bollocks to it" and calculated the muzzle energy, mass of the round, effective range and penetration from the case dimensions (the only constant in manufacture of a round between variants) and came up with an in-universe justification. And since all the reasons it works for the setting and all the reasons it works for me are still just as valid now, I'm still going to keep it. And you do know that all I had to say to justify the statistics in-game was that the rifle rounds were just really stable, and not give any specifics as to why, right? If my end goal was just to shut down all criticism of their performance, I could have done it in one sentence. That's not my goal here. Nor is my goal to argue with you all day about how I do things. My goal is to try and get across why it is the way it is. And right now, I'm going to be quite blunt about it. First and foremost, it's a game. And more importantly it's a game I have to make. I'm putting enough time into it without spending a thousand hours on research to find all the specifics of performance of all these various weapons with all these various forms of ammunition made by all the manufacturers that produce them. The amount of time it would take to acquire all of this information is greater than the time it would take to just make the entire game with a rough approximation for these rounds' performance and be done with it. So yes, I'm taking shortcuts and justifying them after the fact. Take it or leave it. "Delete" wasn't accurate, that's my fault. The exact message is "SMODStandalone_in....exe may harm your browsing experience, so Chrome has blocked it." And it worked fine through Firefox. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If it's okay with you, I'd like to move on to the RPG elements. This game uses a traditional experience point system for gaining levels, and levels are gained slowly. You can gain experience for completing jobs, incapacitating enemies (double points for non-lethal incapacitations and double points for taking them down without anybody else noticing, the two multipliers stack). Getting to a particular level takes L*L-1*500 experience. Basically, that means you start at level 1, it takes 1000xp to get from level 1 to level 2 and 1000 more than that for each additional level up. The level cap is 100, which would take a total of 4.950,000xp. I can safely say you will never reach the level cap. For example, if you go out on a burglary job on a house in a gated community worth 1000xp, in the process non-lethally take down the single occupant (400xp) to steal a jewelry box, you'll return with 1400xp. And if that job had a special condition, for 1000xp, that you not injure the occupant or be noticed by them, that could have made a total of 2000xp if you had acted like a proper burglar and gotten in and out unnoticed. Every odd level lets you distribute six points into your six attributes in however you wish. Since this is only every odd level, that means reaching the level cap will provide a total of 300. That's enough to max out three attributes at 100, get all six to 50, or something somewhere between. Every even level, you select a perk instead. The six attributes are strength, agility, constitution, perception, charisma, resolve. Strength: +1% one-handed melee damage, +2% two-handed melee damage Agility: +1% critical damage, -0.5% ranged weapon spread Constitution: +1 stamina, +1 health Perception: +1% experience gain, +0.1m perception range (outlines enemies you can't see, while crouched) Charisma: +1% item sale price, -0.5% notoriety, -0.5% jail time, -0.5% to the cost (per day) of buying your way out of jail time Resolve: +1% morale (if this runs out, your perks stop working) +1% sanity (epilogue only, if this runs out weird things start happening) I can't go into all the perks right now, but there's meant to be a total of 25 chains of 3. Completing a chain earns you an extra perk for free. One example chain is the Duelist's chain. Some of these are based off mythological deities. The ones that are get increased effects for each perk when you take another perk. An example of that is the All-Father chain, which is of coursed based off of the All-Father, Odin. The first in the Duelist chain is "Duelist", which removes the stamina cost of blocking (though you still move slower and don't regenerate stamina while blocking). The second is "Perfect Parry", which gives a tiny window (1/5 the length of the normal window) in which a parry will ragdoll an enemy (which keeps them incapacitated for much longer than a stagger). The last is "Lethal Riposte", which makes you do double damage to enemies that are staggered, ragdolled, rising after being ragdolled or are incapacitated. Getting all three of those grants "Coup de Grace", which doubles the damage you do against an enemy that is ragdolled or incapacitated, which stacks with lethal riposte for quadruple total damage. The first perk in the All-Father chain is "All-Father's Wisdom", which allows your perception to function whether you're crouched or not. When two All-Father perks are acquired, you gain +50% perception range while crouched. With all three, this becomes +100%. The second is "King of Life and Death", which makes it so every attack that hits you regenerates a single hit point, with a one minute delay between instances. This works even if the attack deals no damage. When you have the full chain, you also regenerate a single hit point when you land a hit with a melee attack. The third is "God of War", which gives a chance (equal to your normal critical chance) for a critical hit to become a super-critical that gets an extra, special effect dependent on the weapon type. All perks are powerful, but I chose these two chains for a reason. Duelist takes a lot of skill to use effectively and will likely be useless to many players who just can't get the timing down, but when used right it can be one of the most potent perk chains in the game. Possibly THE most potent, as when used properly melee enemies can be defeated in a matter of seconds with no harm to you, emphasizing the importance this game places on skill. The other, the All-Father chain, doesn't sound very helpful at first until you think about how it can be applied. And once you do understand how to apply it, it too can be incredibly potent, emphasizing the importance the game places on tactics. These two chains also fit together very well, and it shouldn't take much thought to figure out why. While I'll probably go into more detail later, for the moment this should both be enough detail on the mechanics to get a basic picture of the game's performance and design philosophy.

Getting kinda irritated at the summoning system in Dark Souls, which my friend has no yet figured out.

1. Energy transfer lunatic. I already explained this pretty well, but energy transfer does not equal stopping power. At all. Human tissue warps when shot, yes, and warps right back and keeps going. It warps just as much when slapped, for just as little effect. Also, the .30-06, his listed example, creates more "cavitation" than the 5.56x45mm NATO by a LOT, so by his own logic he's an idiot. 2. Wikipedia. Moving on. 3. Then explain why I've never once seen these kinds of issues with other guns? I had no trouble at all cleaning out my P220, and it worked like a charm. I'm still pretty sure that, since I've never seen these issues with any gun that wasn't a Desert Eagle and not all of those Desert Eagles were even now, that it's not a common issue to all semi-automatics that I'm seeing there. And if the man in the last case was coming in with the owner of the store he bought it at in tow, don't you think it would already have been cleaned since the owner should know better? Maybe not, people are stupid, but it seems likely he'd at least check that. And look, I've mentioned it a lot by now, but all the rounds in the game are made by companies who have been meeting very harsh military standards focused on range and penetration for fifty years. If you think this isn't relevant, or don't want to know them, don't read them. But I think they're important because they absolutely, 100% explain why the rounds in-game do so little damage. Oh well. Thanks anyway. Chrome gave me the warning pop this time, and deleted the file. I'll try picking it up through Firefox later, right now I've got to help my friend clear Ornstein & Smough in Dark Souls.

And you are not listening well enough to hear why. First off, I have experience with the Desert Eagle. It's not innacurate, I FUCKING KNOW THAT. What it is, and I'm not including in the game because I don't have somebody else's code to blatantly rip off, is unreliable. Extremely, unforgivably unreliable. No, it shouldn't give you *any* problems the moment you get it. You should be able to fire it a decent number of times, but eventually it'll flat-out stop working. But you know what, BTG. You may not be listening to my explanations on this, but I *am* listening to your objections. And I HAVE looked, from the moment you brought it up, for information on how to do weapon condition and jamming in Source to make it more realistic. But I can't find any such information. All I got was somebody whining about an animation "jamming" in Counter-Strike. How about this? If I can find a way to include such a mechanic, I'll use it and the Desert Eagle will be portrayed realistically. If not, I just won't include the Desert Eagle in the game. Does that work for you? Because I am NOT having another game portraying the Desert Eagle as the perfect paragon of pistols. It will NOT happen, because I have enough experience with the thing to know it's a complete piece of shit nobody in their right mind would ever use. I used to go to a shooting range with my friends abotu once every two weeks for ten years, I have seen no less than four people bring a Desert Eagle to the shooting range, and every goddamn one of them had problems with it. The first one it worked fine for a while, until he'd fired about thirty rounds. Then it hit a dud round, got stuck and just would not cycle the dud out. Now, sure, it stopped because of the round. But ANY other gun this would have been a two-second distraction, but this gun had to get a new ejector spring. And did I mention that it was brand new? Because it was. The second one fired fine the first three times, the fourth round flew so far off it hit the target in the lane to the right of him. And I should mention that this guy owned a gun store, he was a regular here and knew what he was doing, that miss was not his fault, it was the gun. The fifth round jammed, and the sixth round shot into the ceiling. He didn't fire the seventh. He took it back home, next time we saw him he told us the rifling had been stripped. The weapon had first been fired three months ago. The third one (a .357 version, if that's relevant) worked fine for most of the day, until after about sixty rounds it started jamming. And jamming. And jamming. He fired another thirty or so rounds out of it, a dozen of them jammed, and he game up and went home. The fourth one was a fucking disaster. And seriously, read this before you sing the praises of the Desert Eagle. We had the wealthiest person to ever enter the range one day, showed up with a gun store owner in tow, with a brand new .50 AE Desert Eagle. He left with a burnt hand. The gun worked fine for most of the day, he fired over a hundred rounds with only a few minor jams and some accuracy issues later that we confirmed (by having other, more knowledgeable people fire it) were the gun and not him. Soon, the gun started jamming every couple rounds. We all knew that was coming from the last three times, I casually mentioned it's just how that gun is, but he tuned me out because I was 13. Then it stopped cycling entirely. And it was smoking. Now, the gun store owner, one of my friends and the range owner all went over and tried to help, and pretty soon realized the thing was HOT. There was previously unburnt powder BURNING IN THE GODDAMN BARREL. They told him not to fire that thing until he had it checked out, because that's just not safe. He didn't listen to them. He waited for it to cool down, it cycled again, and then he loaded in a fresh magazine and started shooting. It was so wildly inaccurate he wasn't even hitting in his own lane anymore, and then it exploded. Let me repeat that. THE GUN FUCKING EXPLODED. Apparently the barrel had been warped from the heat, and the bullet got stuck. And it blew burning powder out the ejector. I didn't see much past that because everybody was rushing to him to make sure he was okay, and other than a burnt hand he was, but I'm pretty sure I saw pieces on the floor. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As for the rest, I gave a very simple explanation, that apparently you didn't realize applied to rifles too. I'll take the blame on this one for not specifically mentioning it did. All the rounds in-game are made to the exact same manufacturing standards, including rifle rounds. That means all FMJ ammunition is a boat-tailed spitzer round, with the same powder as every other. That's the best kind of round out there if you're looking for range, and the best short of a dedicated armour-piercing round for armour penetration. And if the standards are being set for military use (which ALWAYS affects the civilian market) and the main concerns are foreign military opponents with body armour, that makes perfect sense. I already said there'd be alternate ammunition types. Some of them can yaw, but a FMJ round specifically designed to be stable so it'll reliably hit a target at long range and penetrate soft armour at most distances is a round that will never yaw. And yes, the second (or third, if the DE gets in) most damaging round in the game is a frangible round for the 7.62x51. It has shit penetration, and won't hurt somebody in medium or heavy armour, but against a target in no armour it deals 30 points of damage. That is a LOT in this game. A critical hit to the abdomen will stop somebody in one, a critical to the chest or any hit to the head will do it as well. What keyword did you use? Because I searched "hatchet" and got nothing. I got one in a Black Ops knifepack that isn't a SWEP and has no permissions information and one that's in a Walking Dead pack I can't use because of the drawing style, and that's it. I also tried "tomahawk" and got the Assassin's Creed 3 tomahawk, with permission to do whatever, but I kinda hate the AC3 tomahawk and I'm picky. (I guess it'll work as a placeholder, at least.) I've never played SMOD. It's a problem with my copy of windows, it keeps giving me the "file may harm your computer" pop-up and it won't close. I haven't found the problem yet, and I'll play the game when I do. Maybe it's because I got it off Mod DB?

You know, Jeb, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Your boyfriend needs somebody to be around when he's not with you, and he's not always going to be with you. You don't have to like all of your significant other's friends, and it's probably better if you don't. It both accommodates all of their tastes, provides a good reason for you to have friends they don't like, and gives you two a reason to spend a little time apart every now and then so your relationship doesn't get strained. It's normal, it's healthy, and overall it's a positive thing. OT: Buzzed, but now drunk. Having a fair bit of fun, but it's 90% nostalgia.

Playing Earthbound for the first time in forever. I missed this game. EDIT: Also, getting drunk to make the game harder. Unfortunately, getting drunk is proving much harder than the game. Why is my tolerance so high? WHY? Dammit.

I just got back from the DMV, I'm tired, I'll read these later. EDIT: Okay, I left the DMV hours ago. But I didn't have bus fare, so it took me a while to get here. Okay good. So I can have 8 for explosives (AOTM: frag grenade, flash-bang, pipe bomb, molotov, CS grenade, smoke grenade), 9 for healing items (painkillers, first-aid kit, adrenalin shot) and 0 for needs items (bottled water, energy drink, coffee, etcetera). Good. If you can, that'd be great. Because I was looking quite a bit through various Source-related modding communities, mostly Gmod communities, and found nothing. And if you do, tell me where you found them, so I can find more on my own. I just got home from the DMV. I am tired, and I've already had three ciders and a glass of Chardonnay. And I STILL got a 9 on my second try. So HA. EDIT: After three more ciders and two more glasses of Chardonnay, PERFECT SCORE. HA. EDIT2: Also, I just did ten in a row an averaged it. 55, 10, 15, 19, 21, 8, 5, 11, 6, 7. I averaged 15.7. To remind you, while I'm not drunk, I'm not sober either. And I bet you anything I'd average under 10 if I was sober right now. Also, the parry windows in the Souls series are about this length. That's what I based the parry windows off of, because I'm a Souls gamer. DSII has a parry window of about 0.2-0.3 seconds (depending on weapons used, rapiers had longer parry windows than shields and so forth) and people said that was too easy. In DSI, the parry windows were about 0.1-0.15 seconds. In Demon's Souls they were about 0.15-0.2 seconds. In BB they have guns that stagger, somehow, instead of dealing decent damage, somehow, that you use in much the same way as parrying. And the windows are all about 0.2 seconds. And players have NO problems doing this, and frequently complain about how "easy" it is to parry in the Souls games. Considered, snickered at, and grabbed another glass of Chardonnay because of. Remember, this is a rapier. It's a very light, cut and thrust sword. It's never done good damage and it never will, this is a historically verifiable fact since people would frequently survive losing duels with these weapons and many people took a lot of stabs to go down, it's mostly a good weapon because it's excellent on the defensive side. And it's no different here. It's easy to parry with, if you pull too early it's still a 95% block, and an enemy staggered is staggered long enough for this thing to get in 2-4 cuts or 1-2 stabs. Add on how long the reach is, and it's probably the best melee weapon in the game as long as your enemy doesn't have a gun. I don't, unfortunately. But ideally, it would look like a USMC ceremonial saber. The difference is, in this setting, USMC ceremonial sabers are battle ready and still carried by officers as an extra side-arm. And a... "motivational device". (Drawing your sword tends to get people to do what you want quickly and without question. Especially if you then point it at them and threaten to cut their throat if they don't follow orders.) I looked for a hatchet and came up empty. I also looked for an E-Tool for the marines, and came up empty. I found a shovel, but only in the TF2 cartoony style or full-sized. So marines are going to be using knives if they run out of ammo... But then, a marine with a Ka-Bar is still pretty damned dangerous. Well, I can include a .22, probably a Ruger because I have the model, but the Glock would probably be your first pistol because it's just so damned common. And actually, I can provide a .22 pretty early on, even leaving one in the orphanage basement in the hands of a semi-intelligent zombie. (It would take a lot of setting info for that sentence to make sense, but I can if you want.) As for the low damage, no. Melee weapons are non-locational and had to have their damage increased to compensate. See, most melee attacks would hit the chest. We can agree on that, right? And the chest has a 2x damage multiplier in this game. It's also halfway between the abdomen and chest, where hits that didn't meet the chest would normally land. So I doubled melee damage to compensate. If you want, think of that 5 as 10, because if you're hitting the chest that's what it'll amount to. Also, this is a FMJ round. All the damage and penetration values assume FMJ rounds. And the .45 is a favourite since the 1910s and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And with this setting, a 10mm Glock 20 is more likely to be in the regular pistols category than a .40 is. (Significantly better penetration, slightly more damage.) 1. Military lasers are infrared. So are these. 2. The pistol is 100 megawatts for one millisecond. That means it dumps the energy of 24 grams of TNT so quickly it can't possibly generate anything but an explosion. It's not a very big explosion, but it's still significant. And the laser would definitely be a decent weapon in-game. It's the strongest pistol (10 locational, 10 blast damage) except for the larger laser, it has very long range, with armour penetration comparable to the molotov. One critical hit to the head would result in instant death as the laser blasts in their skull and scrambles the front half of their brain. The long recycle time and small capacity offset this, of course, but it's still a good weapon at a distance. Except that a free electron laser is both lower-tech and easier to miniaturize, and operating with a very short pulse blows shit up just fine. Yeah, but it's going to irk me, because I know the pulse rifle and how it performs. And as for the weapon itself, it would basically be a pistol with a cylinder instead of the side, with a smaller opening where the last lens is at the outside. Also, the lens should be covered when not in use, to prevent dust from accumulating on it. 1. Better accuracy. 2. Slightly higher damage. 3. 40% critical chance instead of 30%. Crits are a beastly 5x damage, it's important just what your chance is. 4. It's in a different slot, you can have both. 1. It's fucked by crappy ergonomics, immense weight and an easily gummed up mini-gas mechanism. All reduce the accuracy of the weapon. (In case you couldn't tell, I fucking hate this gun.) 2. ...4? It's 13, dude. How can you get 4 and 13 confused? It IS the most powerful semi-auto. In fact, it's the most powerful handgun of any variety in the entire game. 3. You're 14. And being 14 changes a few things. Like your ability to handle a pistol that weighs damn near two kilos and kicks like a mother fucker. I've never fired a Raging Bull, but I have fired a Super Redhawk, the gun I WANTED to put in this slot but couldn't find a model for. And it's really, really accurate, yes. Kicks hard enough to sprain the PC's wrist, might just about jump out of their hands with that much recoil, but it's really accurate the first time. But as much as its damage is incredible... It's still a .45, in all honestly. The Desert Eagle is a .50. It exceeds the Casull, which I must remind you is my favourite revolver round of all time and I am biased FOR, not against, in both bore and muzzle energy. And for in-game, this gun is probably a better weapon at most ranges than the Desert Eagle because the PC can't hit the broad side of a barn with the Desert Eagle. This gun may deal less damage and hold fewer shots, but it's much more accurate and is more likely to critically hit. And hell, if I take your suggestion for alternate ammunition, that would mean a .454 hollow-point is an option. Which is a scary thought. Dude, the prongs won't reach the skin through even fairly rudimentary armour. The lack of skin contact is what gives the resistance. I only don't make it totally worthless against anybody wearing any more than regular clothing (which is the realistic outcome, by the way) because that would mean there was no reason to carry it. Twice the slowdown, deals twice as much damage, otherwise the same. Note: Would be almost overpowered against a single enemy. One critical hit to the chest or head and they're done. Even a non-critical to the head would incapacitate and mortally wound them. That said, against multiple enemies, the six second recycle time could get you killed. And the small capacity isn't doing you any favours if you, say, hit them in the arm and pretty much waste your shot. That's why the damage is up, yes. And the critical chance is down because it can be hard to get good placement with an automatic. And this is my favourite of all the 6-slot items. 1. Yeah, it really is this weak. It's 4.6mm. If you insist on imperial, that's .17 calibre. It's like getting shot with a pellet gun, just going a bit faster. 2. I assume FMJ ammunition for all listed weapons. 3. Even with armour piercing, it's still a bit short of any of the rifles. I feel I need to explain the penetration values. Basically, to get the resistances, I assigned two base resistance values to all the clothing options in-game. One for bullets, and a lower one for other threats. This was 40/20% for clothing, 80/40% for low-profile armour, 120/60% for light armour, 160/80% for medium armour and 200/100% for heavy armour. I then assigned a "penetration" value to each weapon. Then I calculated the resistance as base resistance minus penetration, and I'll assign a multiplier in the convars to achieve this effect. "Extremely low" is for the shotguns and means -20. "Very low" is for the pistols means -40. "Low" is for the high-penetration pistols means -60. "High" is for the kalashnikov and means -160. "Very high" is for the AR-15 and M4 and means -180. "Extremely high" is for the FAL and Scout, and means -200. For armour-piercing ammunition, double these penetration values. For hollow-points, halve them. For example, the MP5 gets -40. Light armour has 120. So light armour resists 80%. That means the convar multiplier will be 0.2. This MP7 gets -60, light armour has 120, so it'll be resisted 60% by a convar multiplier of 0.4. This means against light armour, the MP5 deals 1.2 and the MP7 deals 0.8. This is before placement and criticals are taken into account, of course. And I don't. The 5.56 has the bore of a .22, and moving twice as fast doesn't make up for it, especially since its stupid boat-tailed spitzer design ensures it punches through leaving the tiniest hole possible. It has terrible stopping power, and that's never going to change, no matter how much you might want it to. I'll look, but remember I can only use resources if the creator gives the okay. That's why I've been looking around Gmod communities. I haven't found anybody who has made something for Gmod and not given permission to use the resources for other things. No, because this is 12-gauge 2.5" #1, not 8-gauge 3.5" 0000. Individual #1 pellets don't do much damage (they're 7.62mm) and don't penetrate worth a damn (they're spherical), and with this being a 2.5" shell they do even less of each. Accuracy is just spread. And the exact values are TBD. At this point it just means "less accurate than low, more accurate than extremely low". And remember, your character's lack of experience and training makes the weapon less accurate. And for the record, there should be a sawn-off pump shotgun and a lupara available as 6-slot and 5-slot weapons that would have extremely low and shameful accuracy, but I can't find any I like other than the Counter-Strike sawn off that I'm not sure I can use. But even though it's all TBD, here's the values I was thinking of for spread: Perfect: 0° Extremely high: 1° Very high: 2° High: 3° Medium-high: 4° Medium: 5° Medium-low: 7° Low: 9° Very low: 11° Extremely low: 13° Shameful: 15° This would mean an 11° cone for the Spas. Which is about right, since it's being fired by somebody with no weapons experience. The Benelli M4 is common amongst both civilian and military users and is the standard shotgun of the marine corps. This setting didn't change that. For a double-barrel shotgun to be at all useful in-game, it had to have a tight choke. And yes, you can get a short double-barrel with a tight choke. But I suppose I could loosen the chose a bit and just up the rate of fire so you can fire both barrels as fast as you can double-click and have THAT be the advantage. As for the damage, shotguns really don't get a significant ballistic advantage out of a longer barrel because the gas can pass by the pellets as they spread out down the barrel, and the powder burns really quickly. It helps narrow the shot pattern, but that's about it. Well, unless you're firing a slug. Then barrel length is hugely important. And I would say no, personally... The AR-15 is more accurate than the M4, which is one performance change I made. The other change, critical chance, comes from it being semi-auto instead of full-auto. Both of those are completely justified changes. Except that the rifle really isn't that powerful. The 7.62x51 isn't that different from the 7.62x39, except it moves a little bit faster. And if you give them the same powder, as is the case here, that difference is pretty marginal as the 7.62x39 moves noticeably faster when loaded with the same powder as the 7.62x51. You use it in-game because it's semi-auto, accurate, ignores all soft armour and breaks hard armour quickly at most ranges. Well, I like the SVD, but I can't see it being present in large numbers in Texas. I mean, the kalashnikov was only present because rednecks LOVE it. (And it's one of the few loves I share with rednecks. I mean, the only other thing they love that I also love is whiskey. And even there, we disagree on the type of whiskey.) I get how easy ammo types are, but I'm going to try and keep it to four for each weapon. Regular, armour piercing (double penetration, half damge), hollow point (half penetration, double damage) and one special one (different for each weapon). The difference is shotguns, where it's #1 buck, #2 bird (80x1 damage, no penetration), flechette (5x3 damage, quadruple penetration, 1/3 damage against hard armour) and dragon's breath (expensive, 10x2 damage, no penetration, sets targets on fire for 10x1 damage per second for 10 seconds). Now, I considered including a slug, but the slug would have been severely overpowered. So I'm leaving it out. If I can think of a way to balance something that would be as powerful as an entire load of flechettes, get the same soft armour penetration and not be weak against hard armour, I'll add it as a fifth ammo type for shotguns. I was going to build it on the foundation of regular ol' Half-Life 2, but okay. I'm going to add a few more to the list. The F2000, UMP-45, Glock 20 and Ruger Mk. II. Also adding some explosives (8-slot), healing items (9-slot), needs items (10-slot), flashlights (F key) and offhand weapons (G key). Ruger Mk. III: Slot 4 (pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 2 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. 9x19mm Parabellum. 10 round capacity, semi-automatic, very fast fire rate, negligible recoil, high accuracy, extremely low penetration, 2.5% slowdown. The most accurate ballistic pistol in the game, fires as fast as you pull the trigger and the recoil (while present) is so low as to be safely ignored at close range. I normally don't mention availability, but .22 ammo is exceptionally common and extremely cheap, and you can get the pistol and an extra hundred rounds for free in the orphanage basement. If you can just take it from the semi-intelligent zombie that's firing it at you. Five-Seven: Slot 4 (pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 2 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. FN 5.7x28mm. 20 round capacity, semi-automatic, very fast fire rate, low recoil, medium-high accuracy, low penetration, 1.25% slowdown. Fastest and lightest pistol in the game, does well against low-profile and especially light armour, and since it fires as fast as you can click, it's not as weak as it appears. Still, not a good weapon for a serious fight. Glock 20: Slot 4 (pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 7 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. 10x25mm Auto. 15 round capacity, semi-automatic, fast fire rate, medium recoil, medium-high accuracy, very low penetration, 2.5% slowdown. Compared to the glock, less available ammunition and lower capacity, but more power. UMP-45: Slot 6 (secondary weapon). Slot 6 (secondary weapon). Primary attack discharges the submachine gun for 11 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 6 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. .45 ACP (11.43x23mm). 25 round capacity, fully automatic, 600 rounds/minute, medium recoil, medium accuracy, very low penetration, 7.5% slowdown. Compared to the MP5, it has a smaller capacity, a slower rate of fire and higher recoil, but much more power. F2000: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the rifle for 3 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 5.56x45mm NATO. 30 round capacity, fully automatic, 900 rounds/minute, negligible recoil, medium accuracy, very high penetration, 10% slowdown. Compared to the M4, it's heavier but has lower recoil. Compared to the AR-15, it's also less accurate but fires faster. Fragmentation grenade: Slot 8 (explosive). Primary attack throws the grenade, secondary attack throws a left hook. The explosion deals 120 damage, falling off over distance up to 12 metres, poor armour penetration. Maximum 4. Flies nice and far, has a good blast radius, strong enough to incapacitate and fatally wound in one sufficiently close-ranged explosion should the enemy not have a resistance. Pipe bomb: Slot 8 (explosive). Primary attack throws the pipe bomb, secondary attack throws a left hook. The explosion deals 160 damage, falling off over distance up to 8 metres, better armour penetration. Maximum 2. This pipe bomb is a bit large to throw a long distance or carry many off, but it's very strong. Molotov cocktail: Slot 8 (explosive). Primary attack throws the molotov, secondary attack throws a left hook. The explosion spreads a fire that does 20 damage per second for 10 seconds, within a 5 metre radius, great armour penetration. Maximum 2. This molotov is very well made and does very well against armour, as without hard armour even a heavily armoured enemy will be incapacitated and mortally wounded by it before it burns out. Flashbang grenade: Slot 8 (explosive). Primary attack throws the flashbang, secondary attack throws a left hook. The explosion deals 80 damage, falling off over distance, within a 2-metre radius. The flash blinds and deafens the player temporarily, stuns NPCs. Less-lethal weapon, reduced criminal charges for its use. Max 4. CS gas grenade: Slot 8 (explosive). Primary attack throws the gas grenade, secondary attack throws a left hook. The explosion spreads a noxious gas that reduces visibility within ten metres and blurs vision, dealing less-lethal damage at a rate of 3 per second for one minute. As it is not resisted by armour, an enemy would be incapacitated non-lethally after 34 seconds, and the full duration would leave them close to death. (Don't let the "less lethal" designation fool you. Tear gas is poison, and it will kill you if you breathe in enough of it.) Those that don't will have their vision blurred for one minute after exposure ends, which reduces NPC and player accuracy and makes detection difficult. Less-lethal weapon, reduced criminal charges for its use. Max 4. Smoke grenade: Slot 8 (explosive). Primary attack throws the smoke grenade, secondary attack throws a left hook. The explosion spreads a thick black smoke, stopping all vision within ten metres, dealing less-lethal damage at a rate of 5 per second for one minute. Twenty seconds is incapacitating, forty is lethal. (What did you expect? Smoke inhalation would be bad enough, this smoke is also burning hot and toxic.) Max 4. Painkillers: Slot 9 (healing item). Primary attack takes one dose of painkillers, temporarily restoring 10 health. Multiple doses don't stack, but you lose temporary hitpoints first when damaged and additional doses will refill them. These temporary hitpoints degrade at one point per minute. Painkillers do not work on a downed character. Secondary attack throws a left hook. Activate an ally with this out to give them a dose of painkillers. Max 8. You may have all three healing items equipped to slot 9. First-aid kit: Slot 9 (healing item). Primary attack heals oneself, which takes a bit of time but restores 10 health permanently. You may use multiple first-aid kits should you find more. Secondary attack throws a left hook. Activate an ally with this out to use it on them. You cannot use a first-aid kit when down, but you can use them on somebody who is down to revive them with 1 health. Max 1. You may have all three healing items equipped to slot 9. Adrenalin shot: Slot 9 (healing item). Primary attack injects the adrenalin, temporarily restoring 10 health. Multiple doses don't stack, but you lose temporary hitpoints first when damaged and additional doses will refill them. These temporary hitpoints degrade at one point per minute. Secondary attack throws a left hook. Activate an ally with out to give them the shot. Only works on player characters. You can use an adrenalin shot on yourself while downed, temporarily reviving yourself and giving you a better chance at survival. Max 4. You may have all three healing items equipped to slot 9. I'm not going to cover slot 10 (needs items) right now. But I can say that, like slot 9, you may have all slot 10 items equipped to slot 10. This makes it a bit harder to get the one you want out quickly, but that's alright given the nature of the items. I don't think you'll ever be frantically scrambling for your water bottle, do you? Maglite: F key (Flashlight). Press "F" to bring out the flashlight. Primary attack strikes with the flashlight for 16 damage and a 35% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack toggles the light on and off. Striking with it will temporarily take the light off of where you're looking, interfering with visibility. You can block with this weapon, block percentage is 90%/10%. Parry window is 0.05s. (Good luck parrying with a flashlight.) Consumes battery power Can be taken into weapon-free areas, despite being usable as a lethal weapon. You should find this in the orphanage, right outside the door to the basement. Batteries can be found outside the door to the collapsed older girls' dormitory, an alternate path into the basement. Riot shield: G key (Offhand). Press "G" to equip or unequip the riot shield. This weapon takes space in your left hand, and puts itself between you and enemy bullets. Bullet impacts on the riot shield deal reduced damage, dependent on their penetration. (Completely stops buckshot, .22, 9mm, 10mm and .45 rounds. Reduces standard .357, .454, .50 AE, 4.6mm and 5.7mm rounds by 2/3, 7.62x39mm by 25%, 5.56x45mm by 22.5% and 7.62x51mm by 20%.) Blocking with the riot shield puts it between you and your enemies' bullets and counts as blocking explosives and melee, you cannot attack with any weapon while blocking with this weapon, overrides the normal blocking ability of whatever weapon you are carrying in your right hand. Block percentage is 80%/40%. Cannot parry. 25% slowdown. This thing is big, heavy and clunky, but it's good to have if your enemies start shooting or throwing hand grenades. Offhand knife: G key (Offhand). Identical to the bowie knife, but in the off hand. Primary attack uses the primary of your main weapon, secondary attack stabs with this weapon. Overrides the blocking ability of your primary weapon. You can block with this weapon and attack with your other weapon at the same time. 1.25% slowdown. There should be a parrying dagger here, but there isn't. Would have been useful, you could block well with one while attacking with your main weapon, and should you parry an enemy there wouldn't be a delay before you could start attacking with your main, allowing you to get in more hits while they're staggered. The knife can do all that, it just has a lower block percentage. Another quick, important note: Enemies don't get armour points. The reason why is mostly because it's a bitch to give NPCs armour points. I can't even find a tutorial on how to do it, and I don't know if anybody ever has. Instead, NPCs will get health equal to 1/2 the armour points of their suit, and resist 2x the normal amount on the hard armoured body parts. For instance, a cop with hard plates and a helmet would get +75 health and take 30% less damage on their torso and head. And while you have an important underlayer of health (called integrity, coded much the same as the permanent health in Left 4 Dead, except it depletes at 1/second while you're out of health and is a royal pain to heal as only a hospital can do it) NPCs just have an extra hundred health, collapse when their health reaches 100 and begin taking damage at 1/second as long as their health is 100 or below. (Which does still mean you can just incapacitate them and wait for them to die, unless you're using a less-lethal weapon.) Enemies also don't have stamina, and can do stamina-draining actions such as sprinting and blocking infinitely. To compensate, all stamina-draining actions are less effective for them. They only sprint at 1.5x normal run speed (6m/s) instead of your 2x normal run speed (8m/s), block percentages for them are lowered so that they take twice as much damage (95% becomes 90%, 90% becomes 80%, 85% becomes 70% and 80% becomes 60%) and parrying only stops them from taking damage, it doesn't stagger anybody. (NPC parries can't stagger other NPCs or the player. The player couldn't be staggered anyway, but a successful parry by another player would have stopped them from using the parried weapon for a second, and an NPC parrying them won't even do that.) NPCs also starts taking damage right away under water. Oh, and a quick thing I'm certain you already figured out: Stamina is the renamed aux power meter. You use it to sprint, block, go underwater without taking damage and all that. Almost everything that drains it constantly drain 1/second. It regenerates 1/second when not in use if you are walking or standing still. Items can restore it much faster without you needing to slow down. All pretty basic.

I know denim comes in different strengths. All cotton weaves vary from 40MPa to 80MPa, with most denim being 50MPa to 60MPa in jeans and other clothing. The big difference between them really isn't strength, it's hardness. And since they'll never be harder than the bullet, that doesn't amount to much when you're being shot. Now look at a picture of Alyx. The outfit will be (other than the loss of the Black Mesa logo) the same. Does that look like a soft, designer denim jacket to you? It certainly doesn't look like it to me, but it also doesn't look like it's a super-strong, super-hard denim built to keep you from poking yourself and getting lockjaw on the rusty wire fence at your ranch either. It's probably a fairly normal denim, same as her jeans, and would have the same material properties. As for the duster, I know the difference. I own a trenchcoat, after all, and I chose it over a duster specifically because of how much lighter it was. (I want to keep my legs dry from both water and sweat, after all.) And even so, technically this isn't a duster because the material is different but whatever. I'm calling it a duster because it's built like a duster and there's no word for "leather armour in the form of a duster". Also, my friend who does leatherwork corrected me on one thing. It's only cuir bouilli if it's boiled, which makes it inflexible. I thought cuir bouilli if it's waxed at all, but had I bothered to think about it and realise that cuir bouilli means "boiled hide", I would have figured that out. Parts of it may be cuir bouilli, such as a vest and arm guards underneath the duster, some parts of the chaps, and certainly the hat and boots, but the rest would just be waxed leather. Which is still strong and would be protective, but isn't hard. Learn something new every day, I guess. Okay, quick responses to all the links. 1. Him being a doctor doesn't change the fact that he's wrong, and demonstrably so. Every single hypothesis ever constructed that would support the idea that a smaller-calibre rifle has better close-ranged stopping power than a higher calibre pistol has been discredited. A. "Hydrostatic shock" is complete bullshit. The velocity of a rifle does not mean getting shot in the chest will make blood vessels pop in your brain, and people who believe it are lunatics for a dozen reasons, starting with the fact that there are even smaller, higher pressure blood vessels in the eyes that would pop from much less of a pressure increase than the ones in the brain, and when people get shot their eyes don't turn red. The other reason is because we have these things called "jet injectors" that create an overpressure the size of what you'd experience being shot with a small cannon, and we regularly use them on malnourished children with no ill effects other than a wickedly painful bruise. If their much greater overpressure doesn't cause the "remote wounding" effect, why would the much smaller overpressure cause it? And that's assume *any* overpressure would do it, which it wouldn't for the same reason dancing in a field will never make it rain. B. Energy transfer does not equate to stopping power. Remember that every time in your life you've ever been slapped you took the energy of a pistol round and all it did was leave a little red spot. Bullets aren't deadly because they have a lot of energy behind them, they're deadly because they leave a big, open hole through your vital organs. What matters is the size of that hole, and while more energy will slightly increase the size of the wound channel, it's not by very much and you'll get much more mileage out of simply increasing the bore of the round than you will making it go faster. For the most part, all more energy means it a bigger laceration at the back end (which is shallow and smaller than it looks, and doesn't contribute much) and more bruising around the wound channel. 2. I'm aware that pistols will sometimes penetrate a vest rated to stop them, and there's a couple reasons why. But you're forgetting a few things. A. Police body armour includes composite plates inlaid into it. They're not quite soft armour and not quite hard armour, but they make the bullet having "a little extra serration", as the idiot writing that put it, completely irrelevant. And plenty of cops supplement their armour with chain to stop knives, that would also stop bullets if placed between the layers of soft armour, as it distributes the force of the bullet across a wider section of fabric. B. Most of the time, bullets penetrate a vest due to degradation of the kevlar, not because of anything special about the bullet. A vest a year old is significantly weaker than one fresh from the factory. It's the big reason I don't trust kevlar vests. Who's the say a future cop is even WEARING kevlar? Carbon fibre can easily be much stronger, harder, lighter, last longer and hold up to physical damage better. If I was to outfit the police of technologically advanced dystopia, I'd make their armour 4GPa carbon fibre, give it some light padding. And if they need more, a supplementary plate carrier. And I would pay to see somebody try to injure somebody through that with a handgun. You could try all damn day and turn up empty. And you know why I could do that? Because they're cops. They have plenty of funding for more expensive high-strength carbon fibre and they aren't going into battle so the longer lifespan is more relevant than it would be for a soldier, whose armour is going to get hit more and have to be replaced anyway. 3. These are just forumites, and they don't seem to know much about the rounds in question. They seem to be assuming the power of the round as made by the primary manufacturers applies to all rounds of these calibres. The powder used in most .45 rounds SUCKS. If it used the same powder as the typical 9mm, it would be nearly twice as powerful as it is now. In fact, you can do that pretty easy, because the powder used in 9mm bullets is often loaded into the .45, the one I know is called Bonded Defense. My setting's backstory, which I haven't covered because we don't have the weeks to do it in, eliminates this handily in much the same way it gives us personal laser weaponry. The same terrified politicians who threw huge amounts of money into weapons research for seventy years also put overly strict standards on weapons and ammunition manufacturing standards. The .45 had its powder updated with the 9mm because it was mandated by law that they do so. I also don't know what this has to do with anything. 4. See above. Also, the post you seem to be directing me to in that thread has a hit and a miss in there. He's right that multiple rounds, close together will penetrate due to the damage done to the vest. But he's wrong that anything serious will happen to you before then. I've covered it before, it's like a paintball. Even these rounds are like a paintball, just moving faster. 5. This link is broken. Okay, BTG, next question. I don't know if you know either, and for the life of me I can't find anything about this on Valve's developer community, but can I use all the keys on the number bar, just 1-0, or only 1-8? Because I want to make it so you can only have *one* item for each number key, making it easier for the player to switch to the weapon they want, when they want it. (Alternate ammunition types would be below that weapon on each number key, and would be harder to reach, but that's fine.) And how many keys I can use thus directly determines how many equippable items the player can have, excluding special items like the flashlight and riot shield. And while I'm at it, here's a quick rundown of all the weapons I know will be in the game (because they're from Half-Life 2 or Black Mesa, or I've found the resources available for free). Fists: Slot 1 (fist). Primary attack is a simple punch that deals 4 damage (non-locational) but is good against armour and has an 80% chance to critically hit (5x damage). Secondary attack is a hook that deals 8 damage but is worse against armour and has a 40% chance to critically hit. Fist damage is certainly low, but the weapon makes up for it by being less-lethal, not being classed as a weapon (allowing you to have it where you normally couldn't have a weapon) and resulting in a lesser sentence if you do kill somebody with it. You can block with this weapon (dedicated key, probably click the wheel), block percentage (melee/explosive) is 80/20%. Parry window (a period after starting to block where you take no damage from the first attack and stagger the attacker, staggered enemies cannot attack or defend) is 0.15s. 0% slowdown. Blocking only uses your left arm, and does not disable your primary attack. If I can, having this weapon out will permit the use of the beatdown grapple attack (activate a staggered enemy, armour-skipping, stunlocks enemy, consumes stamina very quickly, less lethal, will probably use the L4D hunter animation). Armour increases the strength of this weapon, increasing damage 25% and block percentage 5/5% for each armour weight above clothing. Perks may increase your parry window with this weapon, first to 0.2s and then to 0.25s. Bowie knife: Slot 2 (melee sidearm). Primary attack is a slash that deals 16 damage but sucks against armour and has a 35% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack is a stab that deals 12 damage but is better against armour and has a 70% chance to critically hit. Both attacks deal double damage from behind target, criticals from behind deal 10x damage instead of 5x. You can block with this weapon, block percentage is 90/10%. Parry window is 0.1s. 1.25% slowdown. You cannot attack while blocking with this weapon. Baton: Slot 2 (melee sidearm). Primary attack is a quick swipe that deals 3 damage and has a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack is a moderate chop (as in, it's a chopping motion, it doesn't actually chop things) that deals 6 damage and has a 30% chance to critically hit, but it's slower. You can block with this weapon, block percentage is 85%/15%. Parry window is 0.1s. This weapon is highly effective against armour. 1.25% slowdown. Less-lethal weapon. Crowbar: Slot 3 (melee weapon). Primary attack is a moderate chop that deals 16 damage and has a 25% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack is a heavy swing that deals 32 damage and has the same 25% chance to critically hit, but is much slower. You can block with this weapon, block percentage is 90/10%. Parry window is 0.1s. This weapon is highly effective against armour. 5% slowdown. Rapier: Slot 3 (melee weapon). Primary attack is a quick swipe that deals 8 damage but sucks against armour and has a 25% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack is a stab that deals 8 damage, is better against armour, has a 50% chance to critically hit but is slower. You can block with this weapon, block percentage is 95/5%. Parry window is 0.2s. This weapon long long reach. The rapier's primary attack is the fastest melee attack in the game, and the rapier is definitely best for parrying, able to parry more easily, blocking almost all damage if you pull too early, and being able to easily land multiple hits during the enemy's stagger animation. There should be a friggin' saber right here, but there isn't, because all I can find is Star Wars crap when I search. But if I can find a saber model, dammit it's going in. Baseball bat: Slot 3 (melee weapon). Primary attack is a quick swipe that deals 12 damage and has a 15% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack is a moderate chop that deals 24 damage and has the same 15% chance to critically hit, but isn't as fast. You can block with this weapon, block percentage is 85%/15%. Parry window is 0.05s. This weapon is highly effective against armour. Two-handed. 2.5% slowdown. Likely your first melee weapon. Lighter than the crowbar, faster attack than the crowbar, has a higher strength adjustment (the strength stat increases melee damage 1% per point, but 2% for two-handed melee weapons) since both hands are on it, but it's also less damaging, worse at blocking and parrying, and doesn't critically hit as often. Axe: Slot 3 (melee weapon). Primary attack is a moderate chop that deals 30 damage and has a 15% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack is a heavy swing that deals 60 damage and has a 15% chance to critically hit, but is slower. This weapon is relatively effective against armour. Two-handed. 7.5% slowdown. The heaviest and most damaging melee weapon I know will be in the game, but also one of the slowest and heaviest. Glock 17: Slot 4 (pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 5 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. 9x19mm Parabellum. 17 round capacity, semi-automatic, fast fire rate, medium recoil, medium accuracy, very low penetration, 2.5% slowdown. Probably the first pistol you'll have access to. USP Match: Slot 4 (pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 9 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. .45 ACP (11.43x23mm). 12 round capacity, semi-automatic, medium fire rate, high recoil, medium accuracy, very low penetration, 2.5% slowdown. More powerful than the Glock, but its ammo is harder to acquire, it recoils more and holds less ammunition. There should be a laser pistol here, but there isn't, because I can't find a decent model. I'm not even being picky, it's just the only things available were regular guns. I would settle for the Fallout model at this point, even though it's oversized and bulky, just to have a good placeholder. For the basics of its performance, it would have high accuracy, no recoil, deal both locational direct damage and non-locational blast damage in a very small radius, have a 50% chance to critically hit, do fairly high damage, have a six second recycle time and hold ten shots. Also, you wouldn't be able to see the pulse, because being able to see it is ridiculous. Colt Python: Slot 5 (special pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 6 damage and a 40% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. .357 Magnum (9x33mm). 6 round capacity, double-action, medium fire rate, high recoil, medium-high accuracy, low penetration, 3.75% slowdown. Desert Eagle: Slot 5 (special pistol). Primary attack discharges the pistol for 13 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. .50 AE (12.7x33mm). 7 round capacity, semi-automatic, slow fire rate, very high recoil, low accuracy, low penetration, 5% slowdown. This thing hits like a hammer, but it's heavy, slow, innacurate and will sprain your wrist when you fire it. And if the game had such a mechanic, would break down in the first magazine because the miniaturized gas mechanism in this thing sucks. Raging Bull: Slot 5 (special pistol.) Primary attack discharges the pistol for 11 damage and a 40% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack throws a left hook with your fist. You can block with your left arm while using this weapon. You can fire this weapon while blocking, but it is less accurate. .454 Casull (11.5x35mm). 5 round capacity, double-action, slow fire rate, very high recoil, medium-high accuracy, low penetration, 5% slowdown. This thing isn't as powerful as the Desert Eagle and doesn't hold as many rounds, but it's much more accurate and it has a better critical chance. Taser: Slot 5 (special pistol). Primary attack discharges the taser, latching the prongs onto the target struck. If the target has hard armour with points remaining, the prongs will not stick. Taser is a reloadable variety, prongs are primary ammuntion. Primary fire once prongs shocks the target. This reduces target's movement, melee attacks and accuracy 100% and deals 1 damage, resisted 20% by clothing, 40% by low-profile armour, 60% by light armour and 80% by medium armour. 2.5% slowdown. Has no effect on heavily armoured enemies. Less-lethal weapon. There should be a magnum laser pistol here. See above gripe. MP5: Slot 6 (secondary weapon). Primary attack discharges the submachine gun for 6 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 6 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 9x19mm Parabellum. 30 round capacity, fully automatic, 800 rounds/minute, low recoil, medium-high accuracy, very low penetration, 7.5% slowdown. MP7: Slot 6 (secondary weapon). Primary attack discharges the submachine gun for 2 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 6 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. HK 4.6x30mm. 40 round capacity, fully automatic, 950 rounds/minute, negligible recoil, medium accuracy, low penetration, 5% slowdown. M4: Slot 6 (secondary weapon). Primary attack discharges the carbine for 3 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 6 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 5.56x45mm NATO. 30 round capacity, fully automatic, 900 rounds/minute, low recoil, medium accuracy, very high penetration, 7.5% slowdown. There should be a laser PDW and a laser carbine, but there isn't, you've heard this already. Spas-12: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the shotgun for 10x3 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 12 gauge 2.5" #1. 6 round capacity, pump action, low fire rate, very low accuracy, extremely low penetration, 12.5% slowdown. Benelli M4: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the shotgun for 10x3 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 12 gauge 2.5" #1. 8 round capacity, semi-automatic, medium fire rate, very low accuracy, extremely low penetration, 10% slowdown. Faster and lighter than the spas, less likely to critically hit. Coach gun: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the shotgun for 10x3 damage and a 40% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 12 gauge 2.5" #1. 2 round capacity, break-action, slow fire rate, low accuracy, extremely low penetration, 10% slowdown. Very slow, but accurate and highly likely to critically hit. Ak-47: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the rifle for 5 damage and a 20% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 7.62x39mm Russian. 30 round capacity, fully automatic, 600 rounds/minute, medium recoil, medium accuracy, high penetration, 10% slowdown. AR-15: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the rifle for 3 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 5.56x45mm NATO. 30 round capacity, semi-automatic, fast fire rate, low recoil, high accuracy, very high penetration, 7.5% slowdown. FAL: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the rifle for 6 damage and a 30% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 7.62x51mm NATO. 20 round capacity, semi-automatic, medium fire rate, high recoil, high accuracy, extremely high penetration, 12.5% slowdown. Steyr Scout: Slot 7 (primary weapon). Primary attack discharges the rifle for 6 damage and a 40% chance to critically hit. Secondary attack strikes with the weapon's stock for 12 damage. You cannot block with this weapon, and it takes both hands. 7.62x51mm NATO. 5 round capacity, bolt-action, slow fire rate, high recoil, extreme accuracy, extremely high penetration, 7.5% slowdown. Features a scope, uses the block button to activate. There should be an un-scoped bolt-action too, but I can't find any. I tried looking as far back as WWII era rifles, and nothing. And there should be a laser rifle. And it would have dealt the most damage per shot of any ranged weapon in the game, with a 50% chance to critically hit AND been the most accurate weapon in the game, making it the ultimate sniper rifle despite the 6-second recycle time after each shot. And yes, I'm bitter that I don't get to include it.

...Okay, just read my own post and I find it incredibly confusing. Now that I'm sober, I am presently going to go back and edit my previous post to make more sense. Apologies if you found it completely impenetrable.

This is only a half-vent, I'm mostly havering, but whatever. I AM A GIANT FLAMING BALL OF FUCKING STRESS. At all hours, I worry and fret about everything, I obsess with everybody else's issues be they my best friend or some stranger halfway across the world. I concern myself with all sorts of things that are serious, sure, but don't effect my life at all. And there's simply too much fucked up shit covering the entire world in a miasma of violence and misery for me to possibly sustain concerning myself with it, or even what I'm aware of. It's NOT healthy. At all. That's the reason why I drink, really. When I drink I stop, you know, giving a fuck. I can just enjoy myself, have a good time, or better yet, relax. Relaxing is something I haven't the foggiest idea how to do sober, at least not completely. When I'm drunk, I don't care about 3-year old Wrongplace An'Wrongtime getting blown up by Israili artillery on a Palestinian beach in front of Al Jazeera, or 12-year old Tamir Dammitimjustakid getting shot for playing with a toy in Ohio, or 50-year old Walter Whyjustwhy getting murdered in cold blood in South Carolina. I can just sit back, focus on my own concerns, and have some fucking fun for a few hours until I sober up. Maybe even sleep a bit, that's not something that happens much for me. Even a single beer at least keeps me from wanting to go Mariner's Revenge on whoever the murderous fucking scumbag of the day is, and that is PROGRESS for me. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not even close. And everybody who says I'm an alcoholic doesn't understand the difference between drug abuse and psychiatric medication.

I'll think about it for custom ammunition, but not weapon modifications because I'm limited to available resources and a stickler for details. Two MP5 models made by different people will be different in more than just the type of sight they have, and that will irritate me to no end. That's the opinion I was looking for, though I was hoping for opinions on the specific articles used. Like combine armour (sans helmet) for the futuristic marines. And you mean HD models like these, or like the HD update to HL2? http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/594763398186046746/B7438169D60C1C39043DA50DCDD7E8BA9A0419C0/ I really wasn't asking for an opinion on the performance, just the appearance and what it says to the player, but okay. I've seen that claim, and looked it up, after a similar debate on another site. The thing is that the shot used was 3.5" 00, against a 316L steel plate. 316L is shit steel, weaker than any form of brass or bronze, or even some aluminiums, and 3.5" 00 has the penetration of a pistol round. The thing is that the shot used in-game is #1, 2.5" buck. It has about half the penetration of 3.5" 00. It only goes about 3/4 of the way through a human body as it is. Literally anything will reduce the damage it does, because it already isn't going all the way through, and it's not even reaching all the way through your vital organs so it'll be significant. The "light clothing" in-game is somewhat misleadingly named, I only named it that to distinguish it from the "heavy" clothing that is also poorly named. I'll change the names to something more accurate, which would just be "clothing" and "low-profile armour". The outfit you wear to start is either a business suit over a sweater or a denim jacket over a cotton shirt. Both are worth about a dozen t-shirts and would actually be reasonably helpful if a dog bit you, which is the only animal attack in the main game. As for buckshot, I would estimate that *at most* penetration depth would be reduced two centimetres by either outfit. But, that's two centimetres less damage to your vitals, less force it would have to get through tougher regions of your body (like your chest, where there's both bone and sinew everywhere) and a harder time even reaching organs like the heart that are notoriously hard to reach with a low-power projectile due to the placement of the bone around them. EDIT: I'm going to, instead of editing this section, explain what I was trying to say, with math. Denim has a tensile strength of 50MPa. It varies on variety, but that's the low end. The denim in a jacket would be about 1-2 millimetres thick. Human muscle fibers are ~2-3MPa, human adipose tissue is ~200-400KPa, human sinew is ~250MPa. With their distribution in human mucles, that gives an average tensile strength of ~5Mpa. So the denim is worth ten times its thickness in human tissue, and that would mean 1-2 centimetres, even with a really crappy denim jacket. And yes, it being worth 1-2 centimetres means the shot will penetrate 1-2 centimetres less. It does slightly counteract this due to clothing fibres getting into the wound and increasing the risk on infection, but in the immediate concerns of dying of blood loss or organ failure, it makes a small, but significant, difference. And remember that not every shot is point-blank at a good angle. I also need to account for shots at a distance and a bad angle. Alyx's jacket would probably outright stop #1 at a hundred metres, or even at point blank if it was at a sufficiently oblique angle. EDIT: Find a relative armour calculator. If the shotgun only penetrates 20cm of human tissue, and thus would penetrate 2cm of denim, then getting a relative thickness of 2cm would stop the shotgun. Already accounted for. The ammunition is 12 gauge, 2.5" #1, which fires ten projectiles. The shotgun in-game fires ten projectiles to match. This is my favourite shot round for games because it fires an even 10 projectiles (easy to work with), penetrates well enough to be lethal at a long distance and has a good balance between stopping power against dogs (the representative animals I chose, should be obvious why) and people. Also, I have to mention really quickly that percentage reductions are not linear. This has to be clear. For instance, a 90% resistance may look like it's 1/8 more effective than an 80% resistance, but it's actually twice as effective because you take half as much damage with it. And a 10% resistance may seem ten times better than a 1% resitance, but it's actually only 10% better. I have to think about that for gameplay balance and adjust accordingly. That's part of why this value is higher and other values are lower than the strict, linear interpretation of their resistances would say they should be. Isn't that the same stats I for flechettes I used in my Fallout: New Vegas mod? +50% from the highest power buck in penetration, -30% from the lowest power buck in damage? Probably a coincidence. And actually, I'd probably make it really simplified for the players and choose a smaller number of larger flechettes that would be really poor for damage but really killer for penetration, as to make the effects immediately noticeable. 5 flechettes, 15 damage (instead of 10 pellets for 30 damage) but it has four times normal penetration. It'll ignore everything up to light armour, only be resisted 40% by light armour and 80% by medium. Still won't do a damn thing to heavy. I would like to quickly apologize for intentionally using innacurate terms to try and communicate to uninformed audiences, when I was clearly dealing with an informed one. The "trench coat" is a duster, I figured more people knew "trench coat" than "duster", it's made of leather. More specifically, the one in-game is made of cuir bouilli, which is a rawhide boiled in wax. It is very effective against edged penetrators, even so thin and by itself. And this is armour made by a rebel group, so of course they attached kevlar to the interior. It's still lighter and thinner than the police armour that is already light armour, and it is made to look like clothing, but it is still armour. If anything, I have understated the effectiveness of this armour against shrapnel for balance reasons, because the cuir bouilli would actually stop all but the largest fragments of a grenade. EDIT: Yes, I am 100% aware that since rawhide is not tanned, it is not technically leather. Armour points come strictly from hard armour, soft armour is separate. And that hat has a thin, metal interior. The metal is tempered steel, flexible to fit the user's head better, but still tough enough to deflect bullets at an oblique angle. And it's under a Cuir Bouilli cowboy hat. (Cowboy hat is a good choice because they keep the sun off your neck and many have a strap to keep them from falling off when riding a horse, which also helps keep it from falling while in combat or a bullet hits it.) Modern police-issue body armour is frequently supplemented with chain specifically because the cops wearing them are concerned about edged weapons. Futuristic body armour for cops would have the chain built-in between the layers of kevlar, and would provide at least some protection. EDIT: Yes, I'm aware that the cops are doing this entirely on their own, and it's not part of the actual armour itself. But it's a good idea, I don't see why the new future armour wouldn't pick it up. Other than cost, and if they're willing to upgrade the armour at all that's clearly not their chief concern anymore. First, a bullet feels like a paintball when it hits armour. You'd be looking at minor bruises from it or any pistol. Even the .50 AE only leaves bruises. Sorry, but that really doesn't matter. You can get your skin bruised until your whole body turns purple and not be killed by it. It certainly isn't enough to account for a full point of damage. Second, why does everybody denigrate PASGT? Even surplus PASGT that is a couple years old can stop pistol rounds and provides decent padding, a fresh PASGT will stop them all damn day, and any reserve unit using it today would be using padding with it and possibly also the scalable plate carrier. EDIT: I just realised that you thought I meant the 7.62x51 NATO. I meant the 7.62x39mm Russian round, as used in the Kalashnikov series of rifles. Thick kevlar, full-torso plate, chainmail interlay, heavy padding. It's a +5 Armour of Fuck Your Puny Earth Weapons. It's 2018, alternate history,the heated cold war and third world war accelerated weapons technology and we have personal laser weapons (I really hope I can find models for them), I think some better than modern body armour is fine, thanks. And for the record, modern armour doesn't give a shit about rifles. At all. Here, take a look. And this is just the AR 500 steel plate, not the full suit, and they never breached it, they just shot it 63 times with a 5.56 and gave up trying to get through it. The full suit would provide additional padding and assist the plate in defeating projectiles, massively extending the life of the plate. I am thoroughly convinced that no amount of 5.56x45mm NATO or 7.62x39mm Kalashnikov rounds will penetrate it. The armour in game is actually a MASSIVE understatement of the capability of real-world body armour, and it's futuristic body armour designed by a country that poured money into weapons and armour research to counter advancing weapons and armour research of other superpowers for seventy years after the end of the second world war. If you want to complain about it, complain about it not being overpowered enough. As for the 7.62x39 doing more than the 5.56x45, that's definitely true... Against hard armour. The resistance listed is soft armour penetration, as in the resistance everywhere you don't have plating (arms and legs at all times, torso when the plates are broken) where the 5.56 has a slight edge. Against hard armour, the 7.62x39mm deals 5 damage as opposed to 3, and will break hard armour significantly faster. It takes 20 shots to break 100 armour points with a 7.62x39, but it takes 34 shots to do it with a 5.56x45. (With two points of damage carrying over to the user.) ______________________________________________________________ I think I'd like an opinion as to how each set of armour aesthetically fits, rather than its practical capabilities. How does it look, what does it say, does it break or enhance the immersion, that kind of thing. That's what I was looking for. I don't mind the rest of it, personally I'm just glad to be back on the forum, but I wanted aesthetic notes rather than practical ones. EDIT: To clarify, I don't mind the practical notes. It doesn't bother me to explain any of this. I just would prefer to get the opinion I asked for as well. You can keep talking about the practical side, now that my question has been answered.