Actually, this is one Quake2 mod where I don't mind people who try to camp and snipe... as a matter of fact it's awfully fun to have the occasional sniper messing up the countryside with long range attacks. The limitation, of course, is the amount of ammo that a sniper can carry, the accuracy rules causing the sniper rifle itself to be the sniper's weapon of choice, and, of course, the fact that you never heal in this mod, which makes sitting still a very different proposition than it does in other forms of Quake2.

I learned pretty early on that it is very hard to be a full-time sniper who only lives to nab the sniper rifle and hole up in some darkened loft with long-range larceny in his heart. The major problem is that playing over the internet causes enough lag or choppiness to make it quite hard to hit anyone at range. Well, at least I suffer from that problem... of course, I'm stuck way out in Montana, so I might suffer from more latency than your average schmoe.

So, the trick is to find a nice hidey-hole which is close to a vantage point. What I mean by this is that you need a location close to where people come up and stop to look around... with a favorite place being an overlook or ledge of sorts. Our fearless sniper simply must wait for silly folks to come up to that tantalizing spot and stop for a look around, then pop the poor soul in the back with his trusty rifle. Strangely enough, if someone is close by and doesn't see your hiding spot, they tend to run up to the same spot to look down at the body... which, of course, leads to a second body joining the first.

The problems with this lovely train of thought are many, the primary of which is that many wary professionals only linger on the edge a moment before moving on. I don't know how many times my ripe sniper shot whistled through empty air just inches from the target because I fired with a quarter-second of lag time over the net connection... and they decided to start moving in the meantime.

Then the other parts of the problem with sniping rear their ugly head. The best way to snipe is with a silencer/flash supressor attached to your weapon, otherwise several bad things happen at once. The first of which is usually your target spotting the big flash from your rifle, then proceeding to chase down your ass while you're trying to get out of scope view. The other problem is that the sniper rifle's distinctive sound will indicate to your target that you cannot defend yourself very well... which, as above, leads to your ass being shot full of lead as the enemy runs up and pistol-whips you at point blank.

Finally, there is the fact that most good sniping locations are pretty obvious, which means that people will look there first to see if someone is being a sneaky bastard. I don't know how many times I've nailed people who decided to take to the overlooking towers in Prison76... don't they realize how exposed they are up there?

This is all part of the reason why I feel this mod is so fun and so well balanced... no-one really minds if someone tries to camp out and snipe for a while, because there is no way to dominate the game by doing so.

-mr clark

And now, for a brief departure from game playing... I want to enter a brief technical discussion on the silencer and the flash supressor. For those that don't know what these are really designed for, a silencer is designed to completely silence the gasses venting from the end of the barrel of a weapon, while a flash supressor is merely meant to contain the flash of incandescent gasses that are carrying the projectile out of the muzzle of the gun.

Sound waves propogate through the air at 1130 feet per second under normal conditions and pressures. Any object that travels faster than the speed of sound will create a sonic boom, and the path of the projectile itself will be sort of a "continual sound" that starts from the muzzle of the barrel and terminates at the impact point of the bullet.

As is indicated on the information page of this site, the H&K MP5/10 and the Sig Sauer SSG 3000 both shoot a bullet faster than the speed of sound, which means that attaching a silencer to the end of either of these weapons would quiet the explosion of gasses from the muzzle quite a bit, but could do nothing to quiet the supersonic crack of the projectile as it passes through the air.

A flash supressor, on the other hand, was never intended to quiet the gun... any such effect is secondary. It's primary purpose is to minimize the amount of muzzle flash caused by the escaping gasses. In truth, the flash supressor was not originally designed so that it would conceal the location of the person firing a weapon so equipped... rather it was constructed so that a person firing a weapon at night wouldn't be blinded by his own flashes and hence be worthless for the remainder of the fight. Just one flash from the muzzle of a pistol or rifle is enough to cause the iris of the eye to contract such that a person simply cannot see anything in darkened conditions for several minutes.

While a flash supressor does minimize the amount of flash visible, it only does so from the sides and rear. Anyone in front of the weapon can still see into the hole on the end of the supressor and see the incandescent gasses during firing of the weapon. But, rather than a large globe of lit-up terrain, there is just a blinking dot on the end of the supressor to indicate the location of the firing person. I think it would be interesting to implement this in code, such that someone firing with a supressor or silencer would still show a dot of flash if being faced head on.

Finally, the size of a silencer or a flash supressor must be rather larger than shown on popular television. The supressors designed for combat rifles by the military are upwards of twenty-four inches in length and add up to ten pounds of weight to the muzzle of the gun. They are bulky and awkward... and for a silencer, it is only good for a few shots, then the internals becomed gummed up with the powder residue and it begins getting louder and louder, although still not nearly as loud as a weapon without a silencer.

Do I want to change ActionQuake to reflect any of these real-world facts? Probably not... we're looking to have fun, not to train for the next FBI field day.

-mr clark

It's strange... even though I'm well aware of the accuracy rules, I rarely find myself crouching down in order to squeeze off a few better shots. This might be partially due to the fact that everyone seems to be running around at breakneck speed, and squatting down doesn't help you much when you're whipping your mouse around wildly in order to try to get a bead on someone.

Of course, it might be a bit different if you had a gang war... say a level set up with two distinct sides, and the special items and weapons scattered out in the no-man's-land in the middle. Who knows, perhaps then you could have small fireteams moving around, squatting behind cover and covering each other's backs.

The problem is, it seems that most people tend to shoot towards the middle of the body, and when you squat down your head is right on the most common plane of bullet trajectory. I swear, every time I duck down to be all sneaky and tactical, I get headshot.

It would be awfully nice if the mod were programmed to let you go completely prone and crawl. Although I can just see myself crawling around being all stealthy and having some fool run up and shoot me in the back while standing over me. Then there's the problem that your bullets tend to come from the bottom of the screen, which means that you can peek over a nice little obstacle, line up and squeeze the trigger, and shoot the crate just inches in front of you. Very annoying. There's got to be a way that could be fixed... sheesh, if I can see someone unobstructed over an edge, I should be able to shoot them without any problem.

It should be a good tactic to duck down behind cover in order to minimize the body area exposed while still being able to return fire. Instead it seems that your screen view comes from the center of your chest. If you examine how you hold a firearm in relation to your eyes, the gun is on the same level and perhaps a bit to the right (or left, depending upon your handedness), especially if you are looking through a scope.

Now, I understand that we could possibly just be shooting from the hip with all these weapons, but that's kind of silly. I can see shooting from the hip with the MP5, but not with a pistol, and especially not with the Steyr sniper rifle! Additionally, where you hold your weapon would change considerably when you are crouching.

Perhaps I can persuade enough people that the code can be changed a little... (if possible), because I feel that there are some tactics that would come into play a lot more if the game engine would allow for it better.

And maybe, just maybe.... if you crouch down stationary with a flat surface directly in front of you, perhaps we could be 50% more accurate for being able to rest our weapon in a bench rest fashion?

Just a thought...

-mr clark

In our continuing lecture on real world physics, our trivia-ridden host will toss out some information on minor incindiary and fragmentary charges.

I love explosives... and I especially love getting the odd frag with one. Even better, occasionally you can manage to get two or three people with just one grenade, which will leave you smiling for a good half hour. However, there are a few points to ponder with ActionQuake's grenade modelling... and I intend to bring them up for discussion.

Note: this next bit was fixed in V.95

Firstly, although most handgrenades contain a chemical fuze that "burns" in some fashion or other in order to have a foolproof timer for the explosive charge, I seriously doubt if many of the grenades produced world wide actually smoke while the fuze activates. Hence, I don't understand why, other than the obvious reason that it's kind of cool and is easier to spot, they decided to make grenades smoke when you throw them in ActionQuake.

I personally feel that it would be far more reasonable to have no smoke, such that people would have to listen for the sound of the grenade hitting the ground and be careful to spot it's small shape when it's thrown. All too often the people I'm trying to frag get away clean because they easily see the trail of smoke, know where the grenade landed, and are able to run out of the blast area in time.

Other than that the grenade seems pretty decent. But, for your personal edification, I'll explain a bit more about how the grenade does it's dirty work.

When a grenade explodes it's internal packing of a TNT-derivative material shatters it's specially designed metal casing into thousands of tiny pieces of shrapnel. The shrapnel alone can kill for as far as it can travel (reasonably), which means that you could be killed by a fragment a city block away. Of course, the closer you are to the epicenter of the explosion, the denser the flying fragments are, and thus the more assured you will be to be dead. Of course, if you are hiding behind a steel plate just five feet away from the explosion, you could be untouched by shrapnel, provided that the fragments didn't penetrate the plate.

However, any explosion of size will cause a air pressure shockwave that can kill as quickly as a bullet. The expanding gasses of the vaporized core of the grenade compress the air around in a sphere that expands outward very rapidly. A shock wave will not propogate nearly as far as the fragments will fly, but, of course, the damage and kill zone for the shock wave will be dependant upon the size of the explosive charge and the force with which it explodes.

This means that a person hiding behind a metal plate just five feet away from a grenade may still be killed by the air pressure wave that flows outwards and around the plate. The compression of the air molecules can reach the density of steel, which means that being close enough to an explosion can be like getting hit by a steel wall travelling at or faster than the speed of sound. It's enough to pop the eyes out of your head and cause bleeding from soft tissue areas at the very least.

Once again, this is all very interesting, but should it be in ActionQuake? Well, perhaps it should... I do think it would be quite neat to have a semi-transparent shockwave that expanded out from the grenade for ten or twenty feet. The shockwave would do damage regardless of cover, while fragmentation damage could be nullified by cover.

Aren't you excited to be learning all this stuff?

-mr clark

Nothing is quite so misunderstood as the "bulletproof" vest. While anyone and everyone knows that police officers wear them, and have their lives saved by them, most people assume that wearing one will make you practically invincible. Well, let's just start out by saying that a bullet travelling at 900 to 1200 feet per second isn't just going to bounce off without leaving a mark.

Kevlar is a very tough, durable woven material that can absorb massive amounts of energy before tearing. However, anyone who has examined the topic of armor at all will tell you that it all depends upon what hits the target, how hard it hits the target, and at what angle it hits the target.

Kevlar vests are made of dozens of layers of kevlar weave. A small bullet striking such a vest at an angle would likely deflect, causing deformation of the material, but not penetrating much. A small bullet striking straight-on would more likely tear through several layers and deform the vest seriously before expending it's energy.

Composition of the projectile also makes a difference. Soft lead projectiles deform quickly and expend much energy as heat in the deformation process, which is good if hitting flesh since the deforming and mushrooming bullet will cause more damage and impart more knockdown force to the target. A completely jacketed bullet has a copper casing that gives extra strength to the skin of the bullet. This causes the bullet to deform less initially, allowing it to penetrate farther before it breaks up. Such a jacketed bullet would penetrate farther through the kevlar layer, perhaps even passing completely through them, although the bullet would be greatly slowed. Note that fully jacketed bullets aren't good against unarmored targets, for unless the bullet strikes the skeletal structure it will pass through flesh making a small, neat hole and not deform at all.

Hollow point jacketed bullets are a hybrid of different purpose. They are designed for stopping the unarmored target, for the hollow point design splits down the center radially upon impact and deforms massively. Such a bullet would penetrate a kevlar vest even less than a solid lead slug.

Additional forms of jacketing or slug material have been used, including extremely heavy and dense depleted uranium slugs, which slice through most armors like it were nothing.

But back to the vest itself. When a projectile strikes the vest the energy of the bullet is transferred to the vest in the form of a little heat and a lot of kinetic force. This force travels through the vest and is transferred to the wearer, although the vest itself absorbs a little of the energy. The important part is that the surface area of the nose of the bullet, probably just a couple tenths of a square inch, transfers it's energy to the vest and is spread over several tens of square inches, meaning that the body underneath can absorb the energy without the tissue being sliced straight through as a bullet would without the kevlar vest.

However...

Even the force of a small bullet, say from a .22 rifle, is enough to bruise a large area and perhaps knock the person down if they aren't braced for the impact. Being struck by a 230 grain bullet travelling at speeds of 900 to 1200 feet per second, such as from the weapons used in ActionQuake, is enough to cause massive bruising, momentary loss of orientation, and possibly even rupturing internal organs and breaking bones.

A bullet travelling at twice the speed of sound, such as the bullet from the Sig Sauer SSG 3000 is enough to penetate straight through the kevlar material. A glancing shot would at least knock a person down and cause severe bruising and perhaps breaking a few assorted local parts of the skeleton.

What does this mean for ActionQuake? Not much for now... but I put the information here for people to read and think about. Perhaps in the future something will be done with this knowledge, but for now we can stick with the mod the way it is... because it's just too damn fun.

-mr clark

The M4 combat carbine is part of the M16 family of combat rifles designed for the US military. Originally prototyped as the AR-15 by Armalite in 1963, this weapon was adopted by the military for widespread use despite it's many shortcomings, which I will detail a few of in this short essay. To be honest, the M16 family is not among the best of military weapons, although they have proven reasonably capable in their years of service.

To begin with, military specification weapons are not typically as accurate as civilian weapons. This is not true, of course, of specialty weapons, such as the bolt action rifles that the marines use for sniping. However, for mass production weapons such as the M4, the tolerances within the receiver of the weapon are greater than that of a civilian grade rifle. The reasons for this are because of the circumstances of war... the military wants a weapon that does not jam or fail to cycle when using dented, dirty, or corroded ammunition. So the action of a weapon must be slightly larger to allow for damage and defects within the ammunition it uses.

The receiver of the M4 has a recessed bolt face, which allows the ejector claws to seat the cartridge more squarely into the center of the chamber of the barrel, which means that despite the higher tolerances within the action, the rifle still maintains a modicum of accuracy. However, this is also dependant upon the tolerance of the recess within the bolt face itself, which may be a touch oversized too.

The AR-15 design uses a gas tube running back along the barrel to work the action, as opposed to the other prototype they designed at the same time, called th AR-18. The AR-18 has a piston arrangement, where the gas pushed a short cylinder that moved a rod back and forth which worked the action of the weapon. The AR-15 design is simpler to create, and has less moving parts, but suffered from a drawback that wasn't realized during the testing of the weapon.

Military grade ammunition uses round powder that has a plastic-like coating. The powder has round grains because it will pack evenly into a shell, where other types of powder can stack differently depending upon the shape of the powder grains. This is mostly a manufacture consideration, since round powder was picked since it didn't jam the machines that were mass producing the billions of rounds of ammo.

Furthermore, the real effect of the problem wasn't realized until large quantities of this type of ammunition was fired through M16 rifles in a very humid environment. As you may already be able to guess, that humid environment was the jungles of Vietnam.

The problem is that in a humid environment the plastic coating of the powder will build up over time within the gas tubes of the weapon, especially with the vast amounts of ammunition that were fired through these weapons in the combat situations seen in Vietnam. Once enough plastic built up on the gas tubes, the weapon's action simply wouldn't cycle correctly and the weapon would jam... permanently. Without a good ten minutes to strip the weapon and run rods through the gas tubes to clean them out, the weapon was simply non functional... no amount of banging on the weapon would clear this sort of jam.

A great many men died in the jungles of Vietnam because their M16 failed in this fashion.

Another problem with the M16 is the bullet size, which is basically a .223 caliber round, with the problem being that at optimal bullet speed and rotation for accuracy, the bullet would make a clean wound straight through the human target without causing the type if knockdown and tissue damage that would incapacitate. Basically, the bullet will pass right through soft tissue, making a nice clean entry and exit wound without expanding or tumbling. This is wholly unsatisfactory, of course, because if you manage to hit the enemy, you want them to stay down and out of the action.

So the M16 family is rifled with a barrel that has one complete twist every seven inches, which is an extremely fast twist. Study of ballistics reveals that there is an optimal rotational speed for a projectile, where going slower doesn't stabilize a bullet enough, and spinning too fast destabilizes a bullet by converting a bullet's internal vibration back into pitch and yaw.

Every bullet picks up vibration upon being fired, as it initially jumps from the brass to the rifling it has pitch and yaw that is converted to vibration as it begins to spin down the rifling of the barrel. Additionally, the entire barrel itself vibrates like a tuning fork, with thicker barrels vibrating less than lighter, thinner barrels. Note that the M16 has a very light barrel, but has bands of metal around the barrel at the harmonic nodes of the metal, significantly reducing the amount of harmonic vibration along the length of the barrel. Note that there are variations within the M16 family with the HBAR designation, meaning Heavy Barrel Automatic Rifle, which are merely versions that have heavier barrels for greater accuracy.

Nonetheless, a bullet has vibrational internal energy which converts back into pitch and yaw as the bullet exits the muzzle of the barrel. This pitch and yaw can be minimized by rotation of the projectile, which is the whole purpose of rifling. Note that air flow also causes vibration and variation of the bullet path, however the boat-tail design of the projectile minimizes the amount of drag and turbulence behind the bullet. Optimal rotation of a bullet allows the bullet to fly like a perfectly thrown football, rotating around it's center of mass without significant wobble.

However, a bullet that is rotated faster than this optimal angular speed will begin to pick up wobble again. The military purposefully designed the M16 to over rotate the bullet in order to destabilize it, which causes the bullet to fly relatively straight, although the bullet is wobbling about it's axis as it continues in it's trajectory.

This means the bullets will strike the target on a slightly oblique heading even though the bullet is traveling in a straight path. This causes the bullet to tumble through the target tissue, causing great damage and perhaps even shattering the bullet within the body it hits.

Earlier wars typically saw weapons of .30-06 caliber, which is a much more massive slug traveling at slower speeds. (Well, at least they were traveling at slower speeds in those days.) These large calibers do not need engineering gimmicks such as over rotation to provide the knockdown and damage potential required. They pack a hell of a wallop by their very nature.

However, the tradeoff is a heavier weapon, and heavier ammunition. The military wanted to give the soldier a convenient weapon that they could pack lots of ammunition for. In general, the M16 family has served adequately, although certainly not being the best or most reliable weapon that is available.

On a side note, it was pointed out that if the military had used the same rifles from World War 2 in Vietnam, they may have been much better off, for the sheer size and weight of the weapon was such that the small stature of the Vietnamese couldn't have easily held or carried such a weapon. (I have to agree that the M1 and M2 are quite barrel heavy and you need a bit of upper body strength to aim them.)

Actually, a better choice for reliability and power is the FN-FAL, but since the M4 is already in AQ2, I guess we're stuck with it. And so, we conclude another brief foray in the wide world of weapons history. I hope you're taking notes!

-mr clark

Here is an excerpt from an email I received...

As a former Personal Weapons Instructor and Range Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, I appreciate the work you have done on your site to educate and dispel some of the myths associated with "real" weapons. I find Action Quake to be the closest to a real shootout I have ever experienced and share your enthusiasm in "improving" the experience to be as realistic as possible.

That being said, I disagree with your description of the inaccuracy and poor stopping power of the M16 series of rifles versus the older FAL style "battle rifles". In addition, having used both in operational theatres and on the range, I would much prefer carrying the lighter and more compact M16a2 (C7a1 in Canada) over the FAL any day. Apart from weight (of the ammo and of the weapon), the M16 series is far superior to any "battle rifle" for the following reasons:

The 5.56mm NATO (SS109) round used by the M16 series is superior for an assault rifle type weapon because more rounds can be held in the magazine. It also produces less recoil and less flash, making the M16 controllable when fired in the automatic mode (3rb or full auto). Also, having less recoil, the 5.56 mm round can be fired rapidly in semi automatic mode, allowing for quick follow-up shots without disturbing aim drastically.

The performance of the bullet is also very similar to performance of a 7.62mm round at typical engagement ranges (under 400 metres). Both will penetrate body armour (helmets and vests) at this range and both are capable of penetrating upwards of 10mm of steel armour plate. Contrary to your reference about rifling and bullet stability, 5.56mm rounds do
not tumble in mid flight and this is largely due to the fact that in the A2 series of rifles, the rifling has been reduced to a 1 in 10 ratio and modifications to the SS109 NATO round have given it greater inherent stability. Furthermore, the velocity of a 5.56mm round over 400 metres is nearly 30% higher than that of a 7.62mmNATO round which means shorter flight times, flatter trajectory and greater accuracy.

Wounds produced by 5.56mm ammunition are also far more deadly and damaging than those produced by 7.62mm ammunition. The major reason for this is that the velocity of the bullet, coupled with its inherent instability cause the bullet to tumble and fragment upon entering a target. This is where 5.56mm bullets tumble, not in the air. Wounds produced by 7.62mm ammunition are comparatively smaller and less damaging as the bigger, slower, more stable bullet typically drills a hole through its target without "exploding" as 5.56mm ammo tends to do.

But 7.62mm ammunition continues to be used for specific applications and there are good reasons for this, mostly in sniper and machinegun roles. The 7.62mm bullet, at ranges over 400 metres is more accurate, less likely to tumble or be redirected by crosswinds and retains more of its energy at longer ranges.

A note about the M4 (C8a1 in Canada). As a tank crew member, we carried these little nasties exclusively. They are almost identical except in size and weight and have a higher rate of full auto fire (800 rounds per minute versus 700 for the rifle version). By the way, Canadian rifles are not fixed to fire 3 round bursts like the American versions. On the range, we were always able to match the Infantry (with their full size M16s) round-for-round in accuracy and timed shooting. On the Close
Assault ranges (where you engage targets at under 40 metres in rapid succession while moving) we usually beat them--it really pissed them off. The compact size and handiness of this weapon can't be beat and as long as you fire short bursts, you'll shred anything you aim at.

The saying goes, "If you know you're going to a gun fight, leave your pistol at home and bring a shotgun, submachinegun or assault rifle." Make mine a C8a1.

Doc Neutron

Here is my response...

I will post portions of your message as a counter-point to my own statements. Please note that most of these observations are regarding the original issue M16 as it saw combat in Vietnam. There have been marked improvements in the weapon since that time.

I will agree that the additional ammo load is a great boon, and, of course, was the reason the 5.56 caliber was adopted in the first place. Additionally, the M16 family are very light and compact weapons as compared to the larger battle rifles... which does weigh favorably with the men that have to tote them around the battlefield.

I'm going to have to re-read what I wrote up, because I don't think I said the bullet tumbled... but more it wobbled about it's axis of rotation. This wobble is very minute, and is present in every bullet that travels out the end of any barrel. Velocity, angular rotation, drag, and mass all factor in to how a bullet tavels through the atmosphere, and although these factors can be balanced and optimized, they can never truly cancel out the wobble of the projectile. The problem is that the barrel itself vibrates with the sudden release of energy... a vibration which will be transferred to the bullet no matter what. This being said, I'll have to stipulate that a fractional variation in the wobble of a bullet will have exponential effect on the target mass. To be more precise, the greater the angle of incidence from a line parallel to the path of bullet travel, the greater the "randomness" (or deviation) of the bullet tumble and path through the target body. This assumes a homogenous medium, which, of course, the human body is not... so even greater deviation of path within the body occurs due to the changes in density within the tissues and bones.

At any rate, the pros and cons of each weapon are biased by the fact that some people prefer the more compact carbines and rifles, and some prefer the larger rifles... and no amount of statistical analysis will change their opinions about the weapons they love. I will state that in general there are no military weapons that I prefer over all others... but I am more partial to the older battle rifles if pressed on the matter.

-mr clark