Ammo weights: An attempt at a balancing proposal

Feedback/Feature Requests
1

At the moment I am having some trouble understanding the different ammo weights, please mind that I am not necessarily talking from a realistic point of view, but from a balancing one mostly, as this is still a game. However, fixing some of the balancing issues might also make the weights more realistic as a side effect.

I will be mainly talking about the types that feel unbalanced, Missiles, Hunting Rifle ammo and most DLC ammo is fine in my opinion, feel free to comment on those as well, though.

Currently it looks like this:

Base line for one round of the common ammo types is

  • Tier 1: 0.004 for 9mm SMG, 5.56 and 7.62, DLC 9x39mm
  • Tier 2: 0.005 for .32 ACP, DLC Napalm
  • Tier 3: 0.008 for 9mm Pistol and .243 and .270

Special:

  • 0.016 for .44 Magnum and Shotgun Slug, Buck and Bird
  • 0.025 for .50 CAL
  • 0.250 for All Missiles, DLC M79 Grenades

Tl;dr? Suggested changes:

  • 7.62 from 0.004 to 0.008
  • 9mm Pistol from 0.008 to 0.004
  • .44 Magnum from 0.016 to 0.008
  • 50 CAL from 0.025 to 0.050
  • DLC grenade Launcher ammo from 0.250 to 0.150

1. 7.62: The first thing that strikes me is how 9mm SMG, 5.56 and 7.62 share the same weight despite the huge difference in power of 7.62 to the other two calibers. I suggest moving them to Tier 2 in order to represent the higher power and (realistically) much higher weight of these heavy rounds. There is no downside at the moment to not carrying only 7.62 instead of 9mm or 5.56 with oneself as the ammo largely outperforms the other calibers by a huge margin, has the most weapon types from ARs, DMRs and LMGs covered and just can do everything the other types in that tier can do but better. Plus thanks to crafting recycling all 5.56 and 9mm and crafting 7.62 will provide a player with an infinite supply.

2. 9mm Pistol: The second major issue is that a sidearm-only caliber has double the weight of its primary equivalent with no weapon in the game being able to spew out 9mm Pistol nearly as fast as the SMGs. I strongly suggest moving 9mm Pistol to Tier 1 or 2 instead of making it double bad by restricting it to the lower end of guns.

3. .44 Magnum: For some reason this round is a heavy as a shotgun slug and has really nothing to show for it. Being limited to one specific weapon type (still praying for the Desert Eagle one day) it is extremely heavy and restricting although it has a disproportionally high drop rate. I strongly suggest moving it to the 0.08 tier to make it more on par with its firepower.

4. .50 CAL: Strongest bullet in the game, used by the arguably strongest weapon in the game, I think having one of these weigh only as much as 6 Tier 1 bullets is not enough, they are real chonkers IRL and their use and power in game also justifies doubling their weight in my opinion, increasing the weight to 0.050 would make it an ammo type to be used at a trade-off and not let people run around with 400 or more .50BMG rounds and 2000 7.62 in reserve.

5. Missiles vs. DLC M79 ammo: Right now they are all weighted at 0.250, with missiles in the game being a lot less effective than IRL I have no problem given their weight, but the DLC grenade launcher also deals less damage with less radius than the GrG and RPG, so I would suggest making it a bit lighter with down to 0.150 in order to give the player some choice and flexibility.

4 Likes
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I even would exchange .32 and 5.56. It’s not much difference, but it just would be fair.

I wonder why they set the weights for the types you need most (because of fast consume) to lowest value. To be able to carry most of what you need most?

Edit: what about experimental ammo? Should they have the same weights as the normal ones?

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If I were to balance weight I’d go for weapons, which all default to 2kg.

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There are indeed many things which dont make sense.
I know this is about “ammo”
But it makes no sense that every weapon is 2 kilos.
Honestly it should be more like this.

Bat and Pitchfork- 700 (0.7 kg)

Sledgehammer- 1.5

LMG´s 3 KG

Rifles Assaullt Rifles Shotguns SMGs and Bow- 1 KG

Pistols- 800 (0.8 KG)

Recoiless Rifles (and rpgs and Flamethrower) - 4 KG

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5

I would also appreciate seperated max weights for each tab in inventory.

Like 12kg for primary weapons, 5kg for secondary weapons, 20kg for equipment, 5kg for attachments, 10kg for materials and 12kg for ammo.

The skills for improving the max weight(s) you can carry could be seperated for each category, too, to make the characters even more specialised.

Of course you could spend skillspoints for each category and would still be able to reach a maximum of 96kg, but each point you spend here can’t be spent somewhere else. So chose wisely.

Imagine that there are seperated bags for each category which each can get upgrades.

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There’s a different threat for that Balanced weapon weights (not 100% realistic though) feel free to contribute

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How and Why can the 9mm SMG and Pistol ammo be so heavy?
Makes no sense for me.

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SMG weight is fine at 0.004 for me, can easily haul like 4k, it’s just the fact pistol has double the weight that bugs me. Do you think 9mm SMG should be 0.003 or 0.002?

@Madchaser EXP ammo is a totally different story, mainly because they are so hit and miss in most cases, that’s worth an entirely different thread imo, I’m concentrating on the normal types for now but feel free to make a suggestion for exp, I think mainly shock might need a weight increase :smiley:. As for 5.56 idk, for me it’s on the same tier as 9mm SMG as it shreds weak points a lot less than 9mm but has better ballistic properties. .32 is actually a very powerful ammo type if you hit parts up close with HP (for some reason damage is above 9mm pistol) but the weapons that fire it are just very niche and have tiny mags.

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I think both of them should be 0.002.

And considering 5.56 is “weak” in this game it shoud be lighter too.
If it had the same damage as the 7.62 than it would be ok to be the same size.

Why the hell are flares so heavy too?
Since when is a grenade lighter than a flare?
Medium EMPS are also too heavy.

Resource weights are now ok, but ammo weapons and equipment needs some balance.

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Don’t forget that when the devs (who have more urgent matters to take care of - like keep sane and don’t end this game) actually implement this weight balance proposal for weapons and ammo, they need to re-think and balance the backpack carry weight too, to make sure the game still have some challenge.

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This was proposed with the current weight system in mind, I just wanted to suggest something more substantial than “change ammo weights” but you can probably see my main gripes even without the numbers, strong ammo is too light and some weak ammo is too heavy. How they do it in the end is their decision, I don’t consider the current backpack system broken, it’s just a lot of the item weights (weapons, deployables, equipment) that make no sense balancing-wise a lot of times. This thread is just about a very specific aspect of these. To round off the holy trinity, weapons, ammo, deployables, we are just missing the third, a weapon thread already exists.

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12

Are you saying this thread is just for talking about, not requesting changes?

Why does it matter what that the weights are? The devs made them all the same weight for convenience.

My point with the backpack was an example of something else that is also unrealistic in the game, but this doesn’t seem bother people. In fact most people like it to be able to carry that much. So why are weights of the weapons and ammo so important?

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Strict realism was never the point of this thread, just balance with possibly realism in mind as stated in the OP, I think in some points realism is achievable, but it should not be the ultimate goal. E.g. the ammo types are somewhat similar in power to their IRL counterparts in the fact that 9mm deals less damage than 7.62. But I wouldn’t go asking for the damage being proportional to their projectile energy or to ask for people only being able to carry a kit of 20 KG.

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Now that you’re talking about…
Yes, it does somehow. It’s the overall package that’s not well done.

As far as I read the inventory once was just limited to a certain amount of items. Then they changed the inventory to a setting where weight played a role, not the number of items.

Now the question: didn’t they finish this change or why does every weapon have 2kg? Many other items have identical weights, too. Sounds like quick done, not well done. Like they just changed the system and as it was there they did something else instead of finishing balancing the weights… And the backpack also seems to be as large just to get not in trouble as quick.

So it’s not just about changing weights of ammo, but of all items and weapons. That can’t be as hard to do this… The balancing/finetuning can be adjusted/done afterwards… But it has to be done.

2 Likes
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I disagree. You assume that the items types having the same weights is the result of bad or quick programming. I think this was a deliberate move to solve the many complaints about storage shortage.
I think I doesn’t take away from the game, unless you have OCD, and can’t enjoy a game when weights are not correct.

I do understand that you feel that the game is less enjoyable when, for example, you see an unrealistic weight for a weapon. I on the other hand really never notice the weights, I took note of the change and it did not bother me. The backpack also doesn’t bother me.

It is very normal in fantasy games to have a creative license be a little free with reality. Remember the good old games where you could gather up 10 weapons and could switch them at the press of a button. In reality this would never work. Try carrying 10 weapons, from which some are the big guns like rocketlauncer or minigun, on your back and handling them like in a game while running. Impossible!

But considering the situation the game is in now - the studio is losing devs (Pontus, and who knows who else), and the product owner? (Zach) - is it wise to change something in the game that is working?
When business is booming, anything can be fine-tuned, but now while the future of the game is most likely non-existent, not!

2 Likes
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Yes, of course you’re right.
I just wanted to say that a balancing has to be done, IF they’d change the weights system.

Like I said, changes in weights should be able to make quick and easy. It hasn’t to be perfectly balanced at once. But IF they change it this way, the post-release balancing shouldn’t be forgotten (again?).

The only thing that disturbs me about the weights is that they changed the system towards weights, but do not take the full advantages out of it. So why changing it this way at all?

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When they used 2kg for each weapon and 0.250 for attachments they did not have to do the research for the real values. On average the total weight in the backpack wouldn’t deviate too much in comparison if used real values. It was a good solution, because dev-time was needed with the real game-breaking bug fixes.

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I just see that I don’t find the right words to say what I want to say…

It doesn’t even have to be real values, but balanced, somehow a bit more logical… That’s why I think that the weights-system is still not finished… And because they don’t have the capacities and this topic hasn’t the priority (because it’s working how it is) it will probably never be “finished”, but at least some players like to talk about it either.

Offtopic, for those who like to read...

It’s like some guys are trying to make a shooter:

"Ok, what do we need? "
“Guuuns!”
"Yeah, you’re right. Let’s make tons of guns. What kind of guns, how should they look like?"
“I don’t know. Like guns look like. We have designers for that.”
"Yes, you’re right. How strong should they be?"
“I don’t know. We could do research and make calculations…”
"That takes too much time for the moment. Let’s do this later. We need guns now. Let’s say the big guns do 100% damage, medium guns do 50% damage and small guns do 25% damage."
“Ok, nice idea. They just should do what they are made for: kill and destroy. The finetuning and balancing can be done later.”

[and as the time goes by, they have more and more ideas and issues to fix that they just forget about the balancing. But who cares? The guns do what they are made for.]

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:zipper_mouth_face: Just because a few people want balance, does not mean it is really needed. I want missions, new areas, story progression, but without their (devs) conviction and motivation that this game is savable, we will never get that.

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It’s often just “the few” who want a change.
Or who think about what could be changed.
Quite sure it were just few who wanted the current inventory instead of the one before. Or the weapon-wheel.

And it’s ok. But it can’t be perfect for all. At least it’s just a request of some, like every other request in this forum, too.

1 Like