Where was it confirmed the 9mm SMG is or looks like the Grease Gun? Seem's like ive seen a screenshot of it or read about it somewhere . .

Well if that is the case, then I will go ahead & confirm if the Tommy Gun makes it in it will indeed take 9mm.

Intact Garden Gnome said so when he played at PAX.

Also the Grease Gun being conrfirmed could lower or raise the chance of a Tommy Gun, they already have a 9mm SMG and the Grease Gun so why put the Tommy Gun in?

Then you look at . .

The Grease Gun was in Fallout 2 and takes .45 ammo as does the Tommy Gun, so the fact they added the Grease Gun could raise the chances of the Tommy Gun.

Geese I need to stop obsessing over this one thing lol

Because some of these goofs want to live out their cliche mobster fantasies. I wont shed any tears if it isnt in to be honest.

Mobster fantasies :celebration: and Fallout history :grad:

I will *Raises Hand*

The Taylor knock out index wasn't made with expanding bullets in mind.

Understand. The figures represented are only for solid bullets. The TKO only measures available energy to impart on the target, not how much is imparted. I have yet to find any good formulas that account for expanding bullets and how much energy they impart, or from hydrostatic shock from high velocity bullets either. A lot of this stuff is pretty hard to quantify in base numbers. The only real test is does the target got down?

PS Also that is why when making comparisons using TKO, I always try to find very simlar rounds, ie: Federal JHP in common weights for each gun or some other available types. I would use regualr ball for all TKO comparison, but I can't always find figures for ball in the weights and types neccessary.

It's time for the Robot to lay down some knowledge. First off-
STOPPING POWER IS A MYTH. There is no such thing as "knock down" power. Especially not the literal knock down. Not even a .600 nitro will knock someone down, except maybe the person firing the gun. Shotguns don't knock people down either. The taylor knock out index isn't very useful because it lies in the domain of shooting very big animals with very big guns, and isn't germane to this discussion. The "velocity vs diameter" argument is also irrelevant because they are two sides of the stopping power coin, which I will argue is a fraudulent, counterfeit coin which was crafted by centuries of scientific misunderstanding of how weapons work. I won't even discuss hydrostatic shock because it's just such a hoax I don't even want to get going on it.

But again, stopping power is a myth. A .45 isn't going to kill someone in one shot every time. Shot placement is far, far more important. You can mag dump your trusty "stopping power" .45 into a man, but if you don't hit any vital organs, it is very possible for him to keep going. There are many incidents of people being shot an absurd amount of times and continuing to fight- and that's not just with "weak" calibers like the 9mm, that's also .45s and rifle calibers as well.
Here's a few interesting essays about the myth of stopping power:
http://www.supertrap.com/ST_Downloads_files/StoppingPowerMyth.pdf
This essay explains how "Stopping Power" proponents can cherry pick statistics to support their claims, when taking all data into account produces a far more nuanced picture of terminal ballistics. For a good summary of terminal ballistics and a lot of helpful charts, go here: http://www.frfrogspad.com/terminal.htm and here: http://www.rathcoombe.net/sci-tech/ballistics/myths.html
Here's another good essay:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/briefs3.htm
This really shoots down (Pun intended) the idea that because a bullet is larger and imparts more force on the object, it's more "powerful".
Consider the following:

So basically, the actual foot pounds of force imparted by a bullet on its target is negligible in regards to the amount of damage that bullet does to its target. So basically you can't ever expect people to be killed by the sheer "power" of a bullet, because it's way within the tolerance range of the amount of punishment human bodies can take. The real damage done by bullets is the destruction of vital tissues and organs, a point that is illustrated elegantly by this next segment:

So is .22 the most powerful round? is .357 mag weak? No. But shot placement, or in this case random luck, is the most important factor in stopping an attacker.
That being said, there is some credence to the notion of stopping power though, but as this article states, it's Psychological. Many people have a concept of guns as "magic death hoses". You get hit, you're down. So actually, there are plenty of instances where upon being shot people collapse, despite no physiological reason to do so. Such an instance is also recorded in this article. But basically, this psychological response has little to do with the bullet's size, except if the victim has seen their attackers weapon and has prepared Psychologically to be stopped by "the big bullet". Bigger bullets may also cause more pain upon initial impact and a broader area of shock, contributing to Psychological component of stopping power. But that's IT. When it comes to "killing power" shot placement is what matters.

Another important factor in wound profiles and stopping ability is frangibility. Rounds that fragment within the body are more likely to hit and destroy vital structures like arteries, veins, nervous tissue, and organs like the heart, and therefore stop a target more reliably. So the terminal ballistics of a round can be quite important. A lot of times with handgun rounds though, you don't see so much fragmentation but often more of a mushroom expansion effect. So while a 9mm JHP is probably more efficient than .45ACP Ball ammo at causing lethal wounds, a .45 JHP is probably superior to the 9mm JHP in its terminal ballistics, because it will expand more.

HOWEVER- I'd also like to make the point that magazine size DOES matter. I think .46 ACP made a comment along the lines of "why shoot twice" or something to the effect. Aside from the fact that the idea of the "one shot kill/stop" is discredited, especially when it comes to handguns, I would argue that anything shooting once is worth shooting twice, even just to make sure. Additionally, hit rates in real firefights are extremely low. In the chaos of a firefight, your normal standards of accuracy go out the window. You may be able to get sub moa groupings at the range, but put yourself in a life or death situation and it will be a different story. The only way to train for such a situation is living it, and then there's the chance you won't survive your training, if you know what I mean. When that adrenaline is pumping through you, your accuracy and tactical competency go down. If you merely have your form and stance committed to muscle memory and can retain it during a firefight, then you are already have a huge leg up on most of the general public out there.

So where am I going with all this? Sacrificing hi capacity mags for a notion of "stopping power" can be foolish. You'll need those extra rounds, because a lot will miss and the ones that hit have a high probability of not doing their job. I've seen comparisons of 10mm auto to .40 S&W which has been lambasted as " Forty short and weak". 10mm is basically a more "powerful" .40 round. Check out this wound profile comparison for common handgun rounds:
http://img441.imageshack.us/i/orjdc5.jpg/

As you can see, the wound profiles for .40 and .45 are pretty similar, so the edge for .45 is pretty negligible. Therefore I would argue that 10mm Auto's higher capacity due to its capability to be compactly multi stacked make a far more enticing advantage than .45's "stopping power". 10mm auto, pound for pound, is probably just as capable a "man stopper", for whatever that is worth, as .45, and you much more easily carry more ammo. NOTE: Double stacked .45's do exist, but are much bulkier than 10mm.

So, now my huge rant is over, feel to pick at any mistakes or inconsistencies I may have presented.

I don't have any problem with what your saying. A football thrown by a Pro Quarterback has more TKO that a .45. An X-ray has more energy that any bullet when measured as m x v². Neither of these things are fatal to humans, or else there'd be a bunch of dead Pro receivers and 12 year kids who fell off their bikes. But whatever you argue about, whoever you argue with, there's one abosutely ceratin thing: Not a one of us is going up against a rhino with a .22. When a killing shot is needed, velocity and mass both are really important.

The problem is how do you make all this work in a video game? How do you accurately portray all the different kinds of ammo and the way they can damage a human in such a way that it even remotely makes sense? At some point you've got to distill everything down to raw numbers, or else the cpu can't do crap. So which numbers do you use?

This thread is probably going to be locked since it has gotten off topic of the game, but anyway...


Because of the 3rd law of motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), the force you feel in kick back of the weapon would be equal to the force hitting the target. I have seen someone knocked on their rear firing a shotgun for the first time. A friend brought his girlfriend out to the range one day and he decided it would be funny to stick a hot loaded slug in the gun and tell her it wouldn't kick much. So because of the 3rd law of motion, if that slug has enough force to knock the shooter down, it could potentially knock the target down.



I can totally agree with that. One of the reasons the US military switched to 5.56mm from 7.62mm was that for the same size weight of the 7.62 rounds, a solder could carry nearly twice as much 5.56mm ammo.

When I got my concealed carry permit, I switched from a pistol with 8 round .45 mags to a .40 cal Sig that had 12 round mags. Then I fell in love with the M1911 and began carrying a compact M1911 pistol, but was back to 8 round mags. I then switched to a Para Ordnance P13-45, which is an M1911 that uses 13 round, .45 cal double stack mags, and is what I carry today. They do make 9mm and .40 cal versions, but there are kits to convert the P13-45 to 9mm, 10mm, .40cal or .357 sig. I've been toying with converting it to a .40 (or .357 sig), since it would only require a barrel and barrel bushing change. The P13 mags can be used and will hold up to 18 rounds of .40 cal (or .357 sig) ammo. I've even read on some gun forums of modifying the P13 magazines to hold 20 rounds of .40 cal. To convert it to 9mm or 10mm would require new mags though.

The cross-sectional surface area of a slug (or buckshot) is much lower than that of a stock. Additionally, bullets transfer force while penetrating. A stock isn't going to penetrate the shooter (at least, I hope not), so it pushes on the shoulder.

your also forgeting the raw mass of the gun itself Vs the Mass of a typical projectile. a lot of people are shocked at just how they overestimate the recoil of the typical muzzleloader for example, when they dont realise that at most the typical muzzle loader slug (even on some of the larger caliber smooth bores like the Brown Bess) is going to be a couple of ozs vs the roughly 10 pound weight of the gun itself.

I forget which video but i remember spying a lever action on the pip boy (I think the cowboy repeater) using 5.56 ammo, which makes no sense to me. when I think of a cow boy repeater I think of someting being used like .44 or something. But a 5.56 used for a lever action?

I would agree to some extent. I wouldn't want to go up against a rhino because I do not trust a .22 to penetrate a rhino's skull. And a rhino's meaty bits are far too large for the area of effect from a .22 to reliably put him down even with repeated hits. But a rhino isn't anything like a person. Some people hunt bears with .22lr, and you can't target their sizable head because the bullet just will not even penetrate. A .22 doesn't even reliably penetrate a human skull. Just recently there was a guy who got a .22 slug removed from the back of his head- it had been there for 5 years and he didn't know it was there. But if it does penetrate, a .22 will do just fine. It will NOT however bounce around inside the skull and turn the brains to mush, as is popularly believed. If it fails to exit the back of the skull it will most likely work its way up the inside of the skull and come to a stop at the top somewhere.
But I'm on a tangent here. My point is that when it comes to shooting people which are mostly easily penetrated by small rounds, as long as you're using a round that can get inside and get down to business, velocity and mass aren't really that important. Fill a guy full of .22s, 9mm, .45, .40. 10mm, .380, whatever, and he's done, more or less. I still say it's more important where you shoot him and how many times.

As far as distilling things down to numbers, it's relatively easy to make abstractions of reality. For example, the story I related before about the cop who got killed by a lucky hit from a .22- in a video game that's what you would call a "critical hit". Critical hits make sense. Just think about it, you shot that guy in the thigh and you got a critical hit. In game terms that's meaningless. But consider it an abstraction. In reality, such a hit could bounce off the thigh bone and be redirected to the femoral artery, causing incapacitation and death rather rapidly.


That's right, and just to add to what you said a lot of people who fall down from firing a shotgun just have poor balance or aren't shouldering their gun right. But no one will ever get knocked down from a bullet because instead of knocking you down, they punch through. If you fired a boxing glove with the same force as a bullet someone might get knocked down because all of the force would be spread out on the area of impact instead of your flesh giving way and having it punch through.

Double stack .45s are comparable in size to double stack 10mms, but have lower capacity. For example the Glock 20 (10 mm, 15 round magazine) is the same size as the Glock 21 (.45 ACP, 13 round magazine). The 10mm in that case has 2 more rounds in the magazine than the .45. With single stacks like the 1911 you gain one round at most by going with 10mm (8+1 vs 7or8+1). IMO the advantage to the 10mm is that it shoots flatter and the advantage to .45 is that it has lower operating pressures.

Our lever-action riles fire rimmed cartridges like .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum.

The Varmint Rifle now fires 5.56, but that's a bolt-action rifle.

Darn :sadvaultboy: I thought you were going to end the debate over whether the .45 is in and if the Tommy Gun is going to make an appearence...Pretty please :angel:

I would make the assumption that if it's pictured with the Vault Boy, it's in the game. But there was a picture with Vault Boy throwing craps so...

Critical hits are the easy one. That's the best way to deal with the lucky shot. But do a hard one. How do you model the game damage for pistols shooting these rounds: .357mag, 9mm, 10mm, .44mag and .45ACP? If we model the game the way you seem to be espousing, then these rounds should do just about similar damage. Why not just have ONE pistol round then? I'm not gonna argue real life perfomance with you because we obiously don't agree on some stuff and this isn't the place, but how do you make the game mechanics work so that there's a reason to use one ammo over the other?

Thats probrably what I saw, damn this short term memory of mine.

I would feel better paying for the game if it was in as I am a Fallout fan and it was my favorite gun in the game along with the Bozar lol, which was the most overpowered easily found & acquired weapon in the game along with having cheap & easy to get ammo for it. The Bozar was that weapon that your not complaining about its straaight muurder damage, but at the same time you wish it wasn't so OP because there are other gun's tha'd be fun to use but otherwise pointless cause of the Bozar lol.

Hahaha, you know what i found funny? You "cherry picked" a bunch of statistics to support your claim.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, darn lies, and statistics.
Statistics will say whatever you want them to say.
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.

I agree, there is more space efficiency to the 10mm though and double stack 10mms are definitely a bit less bulky compared to .45. But it doesn't matter I suppose, as you're right, if a double stack 10mm is comfortable in your hands the .45 will be too. And yeah, higher velocity rounds do tend to have flatter trajectory. That is an advantage.


Well obviously you want a variety of guns, and you want the satisfaction of keeping them all fed with proper ammo, so multiple ammunitions are necessary, just for the sake of having a quality ladder for weapons. I think as far as this game goes for RPG aspects like progression a simple hierarchy of "bigger is better" would suffice, with, of course, large caliber guns weighing more, and the ammo being heavier. Of course you couldn't just go by bullet diameter you'd need to take into account the cartridge size and bullet grain as well, so while the hierarchy would go .22, 9mm, 10mm, .45, the .357 and .44 would come after those because they are magnum rounds. Also note that different guns in the same caliber will do different damage, and while this also may not be realistic it is done for the sake of balance.

Now, I don't think the game needs to be this ambitious, but an ideally realistic system would work sort of like this: you take the data for wound profiles and terminal ballistics of each round. This means foot pounds of force, temporary and permanent cavities, penetration, fragmentation, and you involve them as variables that are accounted for whenever a hit is scored. Inside each target is a model of their internal organs, and each bullet impact reacts realistically to bone, muscle and organ tissue. The wound cavity variable would effect how each organ is damaged, as would fragmentation. Basically damage or destruction of the organs will have the requisite effect on the target. Shooting them in the leg and damaging their tendon might make them drag that leg, if you hit their bone and shatter it it might cause them to collapse altogether. Damaging various internal organs can have specific effects ranging from internal bleeding to shock to death. Hitting the heart should cause death within seconds. Severing the spinal cord should cause instant death. Severing a major vein or artery would cause bleeding out within seconds.

Now, as I said, very ambitious but would take the real world strengths and weaknesses of different rounds into account. Combine it with realistic ballistics models and it's a winner. But it's probably out of reach of our computing power to run this sort of simulation in a smooth running game for now. One day it should be possible though.


Uh-huh. Whatever bro. I didn't cherry pick anything, and I didn't make use of any direct statistics. My evidence took the form of essays and articles, as well as events that are on record (you know, facts.) And cherry picking implies that you ignore data that does not support your hypothesis. I do not do this. I acknowledge that the concept of stopping power may very well have some merit, if only a psychological factor, and that there are instances where guns do put someone down instantly. However, I believe the evidence stands for itself that when on repeated occasions someone takes numerous hits from a vaunted "man stopper" and keeps on ticking (and fighting) that not only are there exceptions to the rule of stopping power, but that it need not be a rule at all, and is not in fact the norm.

I'm sorry to say you disappointed me in your bid to take on my challenge to pick on my post. You misquoted Mark Twain anyway (who was quoting someone else but who popularized the phrase). It's "damned lies" not "darn lies". But really, that quote isn't pertinent. Certainly, statistics can be used to bolster false claims and it's very easy to lie with statistics. That's why it's so important to statistically anolyze every statistical claim to see if the study used proper sample sizes and techniques and made an earnest attempt to be impartial. It's actually pretty easy to find evidence of cherry picking when it has occurred. A lot of statistics equations have been made specifically for assessing statistical validity.

So please, try harder next time. Maybe you could come with some sources? Or at the very least state your grievances. I honestly have no idea what problem you have with my post aside from your accusation of cherry picking on my part. So what exactly are you trying to say?

I think I'm gonna take this over to the main weapons and ammo thread. I feel like we've (ok, maybe just me) hijacked this thread. As long as we were talking about the .45 round I was ok, but this has evolved into a more general discussion of bullet damage.http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1114085-weaponsmods-and-ammo-mega-thread-2/page__view__findpost__p__16383004.