Overheating & ammo - an interesting discovery

[waveform]

Just thought I'd put this out here, as I've never noticed this before...

Sometimes I shoot away my excess ammo with a machine gun, since that seems to increase Heavy Weapons skill. Today I was emptying drums of 7.62x39 ammo with an RPD, when I noticed the weapon overheated sooner than usual. Anyway, after some solid checking and testing, I discovered the ammo type affects how soon the gun overheats! Or rather, some ammo seems to be "dirtier" than other types. Damn! I've never seen anything like this in any game!

The test :
Round #1
RPD (in perfect condition) with 7.62x39 FMJ Ball ammo
At first, waited 5 minutes to make sure gun is fully cooled down
100 round burst
Gun gets 'Overheated' after about 70 rounds fired
After firing 100 rounds - Weapon condition: 3% Dirt: 9%

Round #2
Repaired the RPD with weapon repair kit
Waited 5 minutes
Loaded the RPD with 7.62x39 57N-something ammo (100 rounds)
100 round burst
Gun does NOT overheat during the burst
After firing 100 rounds - Weapon condition: 0% Dirt: 3% !!


I have to say though, it reads in the 7.62x39 FMJ ammo description that it is inferior, but still.. Damn, this game just keeps surprising me. I still need to test if same applies to 5.56mm Ball and M885 ammo...

[Badbru]

Hmmmn, that is an interesting discovery. I had noticed significant differences in damage values the other day from 7.62x51 FMJ vs 7.62x51 M80. I had FMJ loaded into an M14 sniper Mod and M80 in an M21 Rifle. Initially I thought the different rifles(marginally) made the difference but since so much of this game is well done I rethought that and swapped the mags, well, the damage values swapped too. FMJ gave me a 30-55 range and M80 was a 45-75 range. A significant difference.

[waveform]

Well.. yes. M80 is the armor piercing ammo. You can view the penetration values if you remove the bullets from the magazine, right-click on the bunch of bullets, and choose "Info". The enemy was probably wearing armor. How much wear and tear a bullet inflicts on the gun, however, is not visible... as far as I know.

[safoolfool]

That sounds really cool, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was modeled in game. That said, your test isn't conclusive. If each ammo had a random range of heat/dirt generation, it could just be that the RNG made the first burst dirtier than the second, not the ammo. If I were you I would do maybe 3 tests with each type of ammo, recording the same info, and see what the results were then. Also, instead of repairing and waiting, you could just reload the game.

[the_Brain]

Actually the M80 is just milspec FMJ- ammonition. The 7,62 NATO- AP is called M993.

[waveform]

Actually, I did the above test twice, with identical results. I should've mentioned that. However, I got curious about various ammo types, and decided to do some more testing.
This time, I picked up Minimi SPW and fired a 100-round bursts with the Ball, 885 and 995 ammo types.

Ball: Overheat at 90-100 round mark, Condition: 2%, Dirt: 11%
885: No overheat, Condition: 0%, Dirt: 4%
995: No overheat, Condition: 1%, Dirt: 7%

2 bursts with each type, and quickload between bursts. I have no doubt that the ammo type matters in the game as far as dirt build-up is concerned. However, I'm not sure if:
A) Ammo type directly determines how much heat is generated during firing, or
B) Dirtier guns produce more heat when fired

What a nice work you have there waveform... Thanks for your discovery.. I may now overheat ammunitions. I commend you for a job well done!!!

[R@S]

Originally Posted by waveform

A) Ammo type directly determines how much heat is generated during firing, or
B) Dirtier guns produce more heat when fired

Each ammo type has a value for how much resource damage on the weapon the ammo does. This resource damage value of the ammo is then thrown against the weapons Resource, DirtResource and HeatCapacity values in the Weaponinfo file and the result is what waveform has stumbled upon. I'm not sure if the dirt/condition does anything else than increase the chances of a jammed weapon, but an overheated weapon gets damaged and dirtier faster I think.

This is a small example of how complex the whole weapon and battle system of Apeiron games. We'll be lucky if we ever see anything remotely similar in complexity in the future, which makes me very, very sad. But then again, it might be a reason for the BSM team to continue working on the game.