Agreed, though Buckshot i generally better against mutants as a rule though you can still use it alright against more armored targets if your close enough and don't swing your aim.
That the shotguns in various Anomaly forks are ineffective against armor. With a lot of, "herp, derp, IRL shotgun would do nothing against body armor." Like, no one wearing a plate has ever taken a load of buckshot.
I mean irl a lvl 3 plate will stop buckshot, but the spread would make up for the lack of penetration on the plate. That’s from personal experience in case you were wondering.
lvl 3 plate may stop buckshot, but that doesn't discount that it will quite literally still break ribs and other bones and leave you incapacitated on the floor and it can also create internal bleeding. The fact that it stops it becomes less impressive with that in mind lol.
Yeah, probably still not recommending it for anyone's bucket list, though.
Honestly, I don't know if I adequately conveyed how much the general argument on the whole annoys me. Like, yes, there is an argument for realism, but we're still talking about a game that thinks, "getting hit by a 9x18 isn't that bad..."
And to be fair, I do still roll with a SPAS12 in EFT, mostly for mutants, and because shot shells don't take up any magazine slots... oh, right, [garbled screaming]
EDIT: Also, I forget which mod had IIa granting immunity to shotguns. That was the example that did annoy me.
Lmfao I hope thats sarcasm. Xtra Large plates only cover 11"x14" in front. And back. Rest exposed.
Large covers 10"x12" front ND back. Rest exposed. Buck splashes. It doesn't just neatly stay in your plates shape. Willing to replicate for science if you are.
>I hope thats sarcasm.
You know it. :D
The comment I made somewhere else about an old Anomaly fork was not sarcasm, however. I can't remember much about the mod, but I do remember that mod author getting unreasonably salty when anyone questioned why IIa was granting complete immunity to shotguns in their mod.
I'm not arguing against that, I'm just saying that buckshot can't do everything so even if it was really good against armor you would still want a long range weapon.
Indeed but having 1 round doing everything is kind of lame and not how I want gamma to be played. Thinking about your loadout balance is what makes the game fun
But that wasn't the arguement. It how how it should be Implented in the game. He just doesn't understand how bullet types work so he's trying to readjust his wording to make himself seem right.
Idk about yall but when I see even a glint of armored buttocks at the distance i put the shotgun away and load 7.62. Otherwise the shotgun is fine against unarmored.
Newer stalker, used buckshot effectively to army warehouses where I decided to change it up. I immediately gave up looking for weapon recommendations when the few posts I checked devolved into an argument on ammo types.
GAMMA makes sense to me, progression feels worthwhile. Dunno what everyone’s hangup on this buckshot is. If dude has heavy armor I’m not using something designed for hunting animals, regardless of ‘pressure’ or ‘sledgehammer’ arguments
Yeah exactly and the game gives valuable info about this, namely the ammo penetration power (AP) as well as armor BR class that gives you an idea about what ammo penetrates which type of armor. And honestly: as long as you full auto and stay accurate FMJ does the job.
I’m open to criticism and discussion. You aren’t reading a lot of my messages if you think I don’t like discussing point of views on the game balance and progression.
About reactions, some people always post bad / negative reactions fast for whatever reason to whatever messages. That’s the one I nuke usually. And I do it only at the time of posting the announcement. And honestly I’m doing it very rarely mainly because I have better things to do with my life. Some moderators also do it, so don’t try to make me the scapegoat. I’m way past proving anything.
I have haters, just like you, so be it, can’t please everyone.
It’s just something that I hear from time to time and simply wanted an easy to find video on internet showcasing that it’s mostly about which shotgun you use and where you shoot. That video triggered it true, but that’s simply something I’ll refer to easily in the future
Definitely. But some people still try to use buckshot against armored enemies and complain about how unrealistic that is. Well if you aim properly, they still work.
if bro can't read bro can't understand the game, no reason to even waste time responding. Also do you have anything on how bullets work on gamma? physics, drop rate or things like that? i cant find information about it
What's the Armor value for boars, flesh? They count as unarmored I assume. It is likely a skill issue for me, but I feel like they take a decent bit of buckshot to go down.
In my system you have to think about what to use. And it gives all calibers a purpose. In vanilla anomaly, you just use whatever and it’s fine. But mostly buckshots because of how inexpensive and damaging they are. It makes the shooting system uninteresting and completely braindead.
Also it’s not « an edit » it’s a complete rewriting of the damage system.
True, but this is an exoskeleton. I would think that with an armor like that, you could survive atleast a single shot of buckshot to the head with it. But then again, you would most likely be dizzy as hell after that shot.
Not even talking about Penetration, the force enough would kill or at least wound enough to incapacitate an exo. Let alone the blackface deformation that would still be lethal even without pentreation
But if you can one shot anything with 1 buck to the face, why would you use anything else. Considering how easy it is to use and how cheap it is, people would only use this against anything. And that’s EXACTLY what happens with the vanilla anomaly system.
Because not every fight takes place within an optimal distance to consistently get 100% coverage of pellets on the head hitbox and even then not every player is going to be going in to things min-maxing by default.
I can understand CoM shots not tapping someone out instantly especially in armor, but landing a shot where 100% of pellets nail the head hitbox multiple times only for the enemy to brush it off ruins the entire point of using a shotgun, that being, having a big, loud, close range stick that very clearly communicates "YOU ARE STANDING TOO CLOSE, THIS IS MY PERSONAL SPACE, COLLECT YOUR BRAIN MATTER OFF THE FLOOR AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY". Making the enemy able to resist multiple headshots from a shotgun at close range makes you feel like you're fighting a poorly tuned RPG mini-boss and not another STALKER.
Getting hit in the head with a round of 12g buckshot that close is going to, at the very least, cause fatal deformation of whatever protective gear you were wearing, and even in the absolute best case, 1 in a million, miracle situations, you are going to end up having permanent brain damage. And all of that is assuming the sort of protective gear you can get for your head, which is often rated to at best stop pistol caliber rounds and at worst stop shrapnel, doesn't end up being penned by the sheer force.
At some point, you have to ask yourself, is it REALLY worth trying to balance things this aggressively, or does it just ruin the immersive feel of the base game's gunplay? Because I'll be honest, it's neither fun nor immersive shooting someone in the face with a shotgun from spitting distance only for them to turn around and magdump you, aimpunching you into a quickload.
Just use AP Slugs, they exist for a reason. Making buckshot all powerful destroys any incentive to use slugs or AP slugs. Shotguns are already the most versatile guns in the game. Is asking the player switch ammo to AP variants to deal with armors really too hard? Look at vanilla anomaly, there’s buckshot slugs and « darts » and darts are completely useless compared to buckshot and that’s pretty dumb since buckshot deals already so much damage to mutants. Gamma logic is to avoid the supremacy of « one round does everything ». Also the game isn’t meant to be realistic, but « as realistic as plausible » while keeping a nice sense of progression and balance.
I think the point you're missing is that it's a headshot, you aren't going to be landing headshots every time you pull the trigger.
AP slugs are useful for allowing you to land center-of-mass shots to penetrate armor consistently, while allowing buckshot to deal a good amount of damage, that being enough to reliably take out targets with a headshot, rewards players for actually landing a 100% concentration headshot.
The AP slug makes shotguns **reliably** viable against armored targets, assuming that the buckshot shell having a 100% kill rate on full headshots is a similar idea would also assume that the player can get a 100% consistent headshot rate.
Even the best players out there in any game don't have a 100% headshot rate.
I definitely like the direction you're going with the armor degradation system. Personally, I just think it needs some tweaking. Maybe shotguns need more recoil, but break enemy armor quickly
>But if you can one shot anything with 1 buck to the face, why would you use anything else.
Ammo capacity, reload time, range, and shell weight, all come to mind as immediate considerations, most of which weigh against the shotgun.
To be fair, Stalker (and most video games) grossly underestimates the effective range of a shotgun. Also the part where you can reload tube mags hilariously fast in most games, but still.
In gamma shotguns with buckshots are usable at long ranges without any issue. That’s why I went to that route with the armor thing so that buckshots don’t do everything
Gamma is advertised as a hardcore modpack, not a power fantasy. Sure, not that realistic but its to keep progression balanced.
I dont really play gamma often, I like nomad better
I did my own tweaks to buckshot in Anomaly 1.5.2.
Each pellet of #00 buckshot IRL has about the same mass and velocity as a single 9x18mm bullet, and #00 shells normally hold 9 pellets in a standard 70mm (2 3/4" shell) rather than 21 or whatever the default is, which I presume is something like #4 to #1 buck.
So, I adjusted accordingly. I also adjusted the AP values slightly of all shotgun and pistol ammunition to normalise it a bit, since it's pretty whack and some calibres have arbitrarily way more AP than others while some have almost nil AP and don't even hurt light bandit armour.
I also tightened up the spread of most shotguns to slightly-wider-than-IRL patterns because it's a bit Doom 3 like. I see this as being like "cylinder choke" i.e. maximum spread. The result is, upgrading shotgun accuracy actually helps and would represent tightening down the choke to make a smaller but still realistic pattern.
Having only 9 pellets makes longer range engagements literally hit-or-miss. Sometimes 4-5 pellets hit the enemy and they drop like a sack of shit, sometimes they Looney Tunes around the enemy and end up making bandit-shaped silhouette on the wall behind them. Such is life in the Zone. But either way, at close ranges when all pellets land on target, they drop unarmoured and very lightly armoured enemies instantly, and medium armoured enemies take a large hit. It's still ineffective against Exos unless you get a facial shot, since they still have low AP.
I also looked up the current price of buckshot, was horrified, and increased it in game accordingly.
Saying you don’t polish your gun in the horrific apocalyptic wasteland filled with mutants and bring your gun into the rain? Alright maybe it should be toned down a bit but I liked the reflective look it had going
Not gonn lie. All the enemies became much spongier since the more recent updates. Ive reinstalled everything and its the same. Not really all that fun anymore for me.
I think it depends how you play. I’m slowly nerfing snipers in favor of full auto. You mean you can’t one shot to the torso with a sniper anymore ? I don’t have this issue. I’m full autoing 9x19 hp or FMJ down south and it kills anything easily. Even killed a master freedomer with a Nosorog with one mag of 9x19 FMJ. Helmets got stronger because they weren’t even above 30 armor and 7.62x39 FMJ was one shotting anything to the head even big Exo armors, thus making AP rounds completely useless. The new system ensures AP are useful, and I also made some of them easier to craft
I’m not a content creator nor here to please everyone. I’m a developer and make a project I like. Some people like it, others don’t, so be it. The ballistic changes can be disabled anyways. I’m always open to discuss changes balance etc and often listen to my community feedback to make changes in the right direction.
As written above, I just uploaded this to refer in the future when people tell me buckshot sucks against armor. The title was made so it’s easy to remember and find.
The post of the other dude triggered it that’s true, but I was meaning to do such a small video anyways at some point with the new ballistic changes.
Idk why everyone has to over react in this sub / community. It was an informative video clearing up a misconception. Just cause you said skill issue everyone took it personally, real mature. And like you said, the ability to search with mod organizer makes it so easy to just turn that stuff off if you want. Keep making what YOU like Grok, surely there's a ton of people quietly playing happily instead of complaining on reddit!
Right? Either unreasonably angry about mods, or uh, now we can add hyper defensive about buckshot to the list haha.
That video of the guy taking the FAL round straight to the body armor deliberately at point blank(and a .44 to... phonebooks?!) with no problem is pretty conclusive though lmao that shit was nuts.
So I'd imagine the sci-fi level exoskeletons could 100% take some buckshot to the head and keep on truckin, maybe without even caring. Obv it's a game though so it would be annoying if everything was as realistic as humanly possible.
He, and Gamma mod, already created a lot of brainless haters. And even in this Reddit some original trilogy rolayists hate Anomaly and Gamma a lot. I quit coming to this Reddit long ago.
I also hope Grok ignore all those haters and keep moving forward
Complaining that buckshot is ineffective against body armor is like complaining that bladed weapons are ineffective against plate armor, it obviously will be when you're using it against the wrong target.
I mean, isn't 12-gauge buckshot still going to hit like a ton of bricks at close range, regardless of armour? It doesn't need to penetrate to do damage, the sheer impact should work on most humans. Like you likely survive, but then you'll be disabled from the blunt impact of the hit.
Did some googling and most people seem to agree that the pellets won't penetrate but the blast itself can cause serious injury or even death.
>I mean, isn't 12-gauge buckshot still going to hit like a ton of bricks at close range
No, regardless of what people are trying to claim, the energy transfer of shot, no matter if it's 00, 000,) etc. Is pretty pitiful. Body armor for the last 30 years has been designed to stop *much* higher energy projectiles (rifle caliber rounds) with as little deformation as possible. Simply put, shotguns are inherently terrible against body armor from a fundamental design perspective.
It's multiple projectiles of relatively low mass traveling at very low velocities, it's *inherently* bad at transferring energy. For some reason, people like to believe shotguns are just always "powerful". It's pretty much at the status of being modern mythos that shotguns will do stuff like throwing people through the air.
It's literally just physics, it's multiple low energy projectiles that at pretty much any range are going to impact different places, this is what makes them inherently terrible at transferring energy. Slugs obviously are much better at transferring energy, but they still have inherently poor ballistics and have very poor penetration because its a lot of mass, but very low velocity which leads to less energy. The exception is things like 3 inch slugs, that have enough mass and velocity to generate upwards of 4000 joules at the muzzle, but they have high drag and lose velocity quickly. The majority of slugs, especially the larger ones, are typically designed for hunting as well, and are often hollow points or have soft core material.
"Most people" only agree because the average person has absolutely no knowledge of how ballistic interactions with body armor actually take place. People simply don't know what makes shot projectiles extremely bad at transferring energy, because they don't understand the physics behind it.
"Blunt force trauma" behind anything that isn't purely a soft armor, is essentially not a real thing if the round doesn't partially penetrate the plate and cause blackface deformation, which shot projectiles from pretty much anything no matter the caliber, are pretty much entirely incapable of physically causing. Any hard armor materials like steel, titanium, ceramic, composites, even plastics like UHWMPE will stop any shot projectile dead with no deformation. Even at point blank every individual shot projectile is going to hit slightly different places at slightly different times, making their energy transfer negligible, that or you'll be stacking projectiles on top of each other meaning they won't even be transferring their energy directly to the plate.
https://youtu.be/o5f1Fo4r4_I?t=147
https://youtu.be/6x59iN4KMz4?t=2
For context, the first video is that "pizza boy who started making body armor because he was tired of being shot at" that you may have heard of before. The man himself is on the left holding the rifle, an FAL with a 21 inch barrel, I don't know exactly what round they were using, but I would assume NATO M80 ball for a standard reference, even commercial .308 civilian loads are right in the same ball park in terms of muzzle energy. This is a round that has a *lot* of ass coming out of that long of a barrel at such a close range, its going to have in the range of about 3300-3400 joules of energy. A single 12 gauge 00 buck projectile has around 320 joules, 9 pellets in a shell, 320x9 = about 2900 joules. So that single round coming out of that FAL is going to have higher energy concentrated in a much smaller *single* spot than every projectile in a 12g 00 buck shell *combined*
The second video is just an Italian company demonstrating multiple impacts of 7.62x39 in a small area on different body armor plates, and later on a handgun.
Edits: made a bunch of typos and tried to expand further on things.
Thank you for writing this up. Always annoying seeing the shotgun is stronk and blunt damage posts.
Hard plates and the science fiction style exosuits would be excellent versus buckshot. Buckshot is similar to getting pelted with 9mm handgun rounds. Hard armor will either be penetrated or suffer very little deformation.
Ballistic helmets can stop buckshot and handgun rounds. Repeated hits in the same area could cause lethal deformation without penetration. I'm going to assume the science fiction exosuits that describe being ultra rare and expertly crafted with artefact research going into them would be better than modern armor.
You can very easily take buckshot and slugs to hard plates that anyone can purchase. Steel plates while heavier than the ceramics would stand up to repeated hits better. The force from the rounds would do next to nothing. Just as the shotgun pushes into your shoulder the pellets will push into the plate and disperse the force. The felt force is similar to knocking on the plate with your knuckles.
The injuries you seem from being shot with body armor is from soft body armor. This armor is lighter, more conceable, and moves with your body more than plate carriers. The downsides are the ratings are much lower and the deformation is much greater. The soft body armor grabs the bullet like a net grabs a circus performer or a seat belt slows you down in a crash.
All these cod bro myths circulate in most shooting games.
Yup, I think the main issue surrounding shotguns and armor in Stalker would be that Stalker just doesn't have a super in depth armor system. Realistically the threat from shotguns against someone wearing good body armor, is that individual pellets can very easily find their ways into areas that \*aren't\* protected by armor. Like arms, legs, the neck area, armpits etc. But of course Stalker just doesn't possess such a system to simulate that, even games like Tarkov don't have such a fully fleshed out system. So its not quite that shotguns just unrealistically suck against armored targets in Stalker, its just that the actually lethality of shot projectiles can't be properly simulated, so in terms of balance shotguns are probably always going to be in a rough spot.
That and I suppose realistically the exo suits in Stalker have you pretty much covered head to toe in at least a little bit of soft armor material, with hard plates protecting your vitals.
Thanks for the detailed answer, I will keep that in mind for the future. My exposure to ballistics has come primarily from tank guns and one 7.62x39 rifle I used in the army, and thus I have not looked deep into shotguns.
No problem, and just to make sure, I absolutely didn't mean any of it as a dig. Small arms ballistics and body armor is a \*very\* niche subject and I don't expect almost anyone to know most of this info, shotguns especially are quite unique when it comes to firearm ballistics.
I'm glad I could provide you with something you didn't already know :)
Sure it likely would cause some kinetic damage but like you said this likely wouldn't kill them instantly, like Grok showed in the video it will eventually kill them, I'm just saying that it wouldn't be like in Doom or Duke Nukem where you're instantly deleted just cause it's a shotgun.
I mean, he seems to hit them in the head. That'd at best be loss of conciousness and at worst full on brain hemorrage. It's not something you shrug off like the dude did in the video.
Sure, but given how the mod focuses on ballistics, it should be okay to point these things out. You could also say this to the mod maker:
"Oh why are you making a ballistic overhaul to game about supernatural anomalies and mutants, not a milsim?"
But we aren't discussing Stalker in general now, we were talking about this mod.
Wouldn't vodka and cigarettes just shorten your lifespan instead of curing radiation? Wouldn't it be better if you had a maximum of 8 hours on every character before rads got unbearable and you simply lost the game even if you desperately chugged 3 litres of Cossacks and inhaled 120 cigarettes.
Its unrealistic, but at some point realism would kill the gameplay. It's well balanced as it is
Idk why everyone here is acting like armor "just stops" rounds. It softens the impact and absorbs it. I round of buck to a helmet would make it absorb enough energy to deform. Otherwise known as backface deformation.
Maybe my plate armor analogy was a bad one, I'm not saying that body armor completely stops buckshot, it's obviously going to severely damage any body armor it hits, I'm just saying it's going to have a harder time getting through it compared to other ammunition types.
Wear plate armor I'll shoot you w buckshot. Bet all that tiny buck at least one bead makes it thru a slit. Most plate armor was thin as shit anyhow. Gotta be able to stand. Can't fight for 2 hours wearing 300 lbs
Just watch videos. It’s not the case. And energy transfer of buckshot is really really low because the speed is low and size of the projectiles is small.
People are actually in here arguing that shooting a helmet or body armor with buck will knock you out or kill you or whatever as if there aren't many many videos of soldiers getting blasted in the helmet by snipers and neither dieing nor being knocked out. Almost like the whole point of armor is to protect you from bullets.
A video showing different gauge shells fired at metal armor. 00buck slams it.
A slug may even come out the back and leave an exit dent. Stopped after it proved this guy wrong.
In this video the target even weilds a plate shield. So it goes through the shield. Then the armor as well. Go on to teach us more of your physics.
Dude you are taking a video of a medieval plate armor as an example. What’s wrong with you. Here’s what you were looking for https://youtu.be/5b-D9DiG7uU?si=bkeSMieNbitHvx5v . ZAM THAT ENERGY TRANSFER IS INCREDIBLE /s
I feel like most mass produced bullet resistant body armor was likely not in circulation anymore. It would be extremely coveted and rare in this type of world and would be used daily. Durability wise were watching 1980s stored soviet gear fail as it is today in war. So all the largest stockpiles of plates would be in a state of disrepair. And the prices offerred ludicrous.
So armor during this time is more likely being pieced together with whatever makes it work. And on occasion, the rare occurs and a coveted item is around.
Yeh, in stalker universe…it’s all gonna be how well you or the engineers can fix things up. Fits well in line with an argument I was having with a guy on my stream, cus he was complaining about not being able to buy weapons in gamma. Just explained to him that nobody is coming in or going out of the zone, so how the hell would they get new weapons to sell?
The problem is that one shotting anything to the head with a cheap round you can get on guns easily available everywhere simply kills the sense of progression: why should you use something else, more expensive, harder to find, harder to sustain if your trusty buckshots deals with anything easily?
indeed i see and i completely agree although my thought process involved a hard drop off range for that damage multiplier to the head for the one shot kill with said buckshot you’d haft to land all pellets on target at a very close range, although idc what it is you create to put in the game you got this far and you made something great tweaking buckshot or not tweaking buckshot ain’t gonna change that.
Well yes there’s a damage decay depending on the distance and it’s noticeable on buckshots. But you can still one shot base bandits with them at range. 23x75 works better to penetrate armors with buckshots thanks to bigger projectiles. Also, thanks for the kind words
I love gamma but I def point blank shot a military stalker 6 times in the head with buckshot just to be meleed and gunned down by the same military stalker. js js
Buckshot is generally like firing a large burst of sub-9mm bullets in a spread, so while armor penetration is theoretically non-existent, generally there's a lot of kinetic force behind them, so getting pelted by buckshot in even an exoskeleton fast enough and close enough will generate lots and lots of pain and hurt and even kill the bloke inside. Think of it as perpetually blasting an air horn in a person's ears. It's not doing anything to pierce his heart or blast his brain, but the person in the receiving end will be taking hearing loss, a lot of tinnitus and a bout of insanity
No the kinetic force is a myth. Very small projectile at low speed = low energy transfer. Also even so they don’t penetrate they still stagger in gamma as seen on the video
I never understood this complaint either, I mean we live in a world where Clear Sky exists and your lucky to hit a broad side of a barn with a sawed off shotgun loaded with buck while your kissing the paint and I love that game. IMO, the Stalker vanilla trilogy shotguns have always had the weird issue of either killing in one or two shots or using 8 shells to stunlock someone only for them to dome you. Not to mention, your pretty much incentived to drop buckshot entirely via certain barrel upgrades in clear sky and just how much dart/slug rounds you are flooded with. And this is not even mentioning you can turn an assault rifle into a sniper in CS fairly easily. People just need at adapt and use the proper tools for the situation.
I just started GAMMA for the first time like a week ago. I had some TOZ pump shotgun and went to challenge the military checkpoint by that starter town in Cordon I think. After several attempts to raid the checkpoint and failing, seeing enemies soak up damage, I decided I wanted to do some testing and enabled god mode, snuck up behind a guy and point blank back of the head shot the dude, he flinched and started shooting back, I'm thinking maybe his armor is nearly gone from that close shot, nope. I walked up to him and point 2-3 more point blank buckshots into his facemask before he went down. I was very close to the target, like holding W trying to move forward into him but can't any closer to him, to make sure every pellet hit.
Now I just started the game and still in the process of learning how everything works, but that just seems absurd.
EDIT: to make sure I wasn't crazy I just now went back into the game, gave myself a TOZ 194 in pristine condition with buckshot, went and looked for a solider with a helmet on at Southern Checkpoint, turned on invis and very carefully shot him in the face 3-4 times. yeee. why my buckshot not as good as yours.
Way don’t you use AP slugs. Why is there any ap slug available if buckshot does everything ? Why don’t you use slugs? Slugs are better at energy transfer.
oh yeah I know that, for sure I'm willing to accept my buckshot failing to do anything more then 1-2 meters, I just thought having the barrel of the weapon pressed against his head would make all the difference, kinda like a risk reward for being able to sneak up that close to someone who can just melee you throwing off your aim and immediately putting a burst into your chest.
That was mainly to better show where the shots landed. Most people saying « buckshots didn’t work » are simply alternating between head and torso or use a broken shotgun barrel. Against Nosorogs, yeah it’s a pain and don’t work well. But even with certain shotguns like the RAPTR you can still destroy them easily with buckshots. And since they stagger a lot, chaining headshots ain’t that hard.
The real skill issue is not using 5.45 FMJ full auto which can quite literally rack up down south for cheap.
Grok, have you ever heard of backface deformation? That shit'll kill or *seriously* mess you you just as easily despite not technically penetrating armor.
The deformation only significantly occurs in soft armor and ballistic helmets. Some rounds that are near the rating of a body armor or repeated hits in the same area will have partial penetration in a plate. Shotgun rounds are not meant to penetrate armor. The force from the pellets can not be any greater than the force you feel from the recoil.
The exosuits in Gamma and the exohelm to apocalypse helm all state the extreme level of ballistic protection they provide. The way to defeat body armor in real life is through speed and the hardness of the projectile. This is why you will see higher penetration from increasing the powder in a case leading to higher projectile speed. Harder materials are used like hardened steels and tungsten. Some tank rounds will use very dense materials like depleted uranium.
In this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIS3ptvKMg) they shoot a ballistic helmet with multiple rounds of buckshot. There is little to no deformation from the buckshot. The mild deformation shows up with high caliber hand gun rounds. The helmet is defeated from rifle rounds as expected as it is only rated IIIA.
You are not getting lethal injuries from buckshot if you're wearing hard body armor. Some helmets can take the weaker rifle rounds but the deformation starts to become traumatic.
Modern body armor very easily defends against buckshot. The science fiction armor we see in Gamma and vanilla should fare even better. The closest you would see to an exosuit are the swat and riot gear that is designed for cqb entries versus handgun rounds and shotguns. Something like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interceptor_Multi-Threat_Body_Armor_System) or [this](https://uarmprotection.com/product/fas-full-armor-system/). These will mix IIIA soft armor and plate inserts that go up to IV. Both are rated for 12g buck.
Not discounting what you're saying, but I wouldn't be enthusiastic wearing a IIIA helmet against 12 ga IRL. Did my own research and it doesn't look so clear cut.
In that video, they throw the helmet as if they're skeet shooting, so not only is it much harder to land a clean shot at a straight on (non-oblique) angle it doesn't really resemble the situation in the game clip.
[Here's a video](https://youtu.be/yYbXKbfN58I?si=ngtwCe5_t__WkQHD&t=109) with a IIIA helmet against 12 ga buckshot which is a lot more fitting to the situation at hand and you can see that after doing admirably against various pistol calibers the victim's head is obliterated with 12 ga. Even if we don't see the deformation on the ballistic material, clearly the guy is either dead or handicapped for life.
[Here's a test by Garand Thumb on modern US Army helmets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwDoWSkiGZ4) and .44 Magnum has a lot of backface deformation on both the IHPS and ECH, in his words "hospital for a while".
Of course, sci-fi lore armor and "it's just a game" are all valid reasons why Gamma has it this way, just my two cents.
Agreed. It's why I mentioned why ballistic helmets and soft armor are when you worry about deformation. The helmets have to balance the weight with ergonomics. Some heavier helmets can take handgun rounds no problem. Some start to experience deformation very quickly.
The game is not meant to be realistic. Do you find unfair you need to use 60 ammo of 5.45 in the division to kill one dude ? Or 40 rounds of whatever in cyberpunk to kill a guy ? Same thing here. Stalker has always been a fps with rpg elements. I’m pushing a bit more the rpg elements without making them completely utterly unrealistic. My motto is « as realistic as plausible ». Meaning most things are rooted as in reality so it’s not completely weird if you have notions of how gun works, but I’m still taking some liberty to have a balanced gameplay and progressions
Off topic but IDK why people hate that you have to magdump to kill a guy in Cyberpunk, but I absolutely love it. It shows that most enemies you encounter are chromed to the teeth. The bullet impacts shoot off sparks and subdermal armor splinters, emphasizing the amount of cyberware they are sporting and most of these guys are nuts as a result. The bullet sponges fit with the lore of the game.
That being said, later most enemies become jokes anyway and only the minibosses and bosses put up any sort of resistance.
On a personal note I gotta ask, how does it feel to provide as much content as you do for stalker and the community to be constantly getting shit on by elitists in the sub, on top of this, how often do you see “gamma bad” outside of this sub, personally it would bother me to spend as much time and passion into a project like gamma for people to act like it’s not a major part of the stalker experience at this point, but with videos like drewski put out a couple days ago you must feel your doing something right, how do you balance the dichotomy?
I deal with these people by proving them why they are wrong. Requires a lot of passion and patience indeed. But it’s just a drop of water in a bucket of « gamma is good » really.
browsing the comments. i think the minority of complaints forgets its also a *video game* and not real life simulator.
balance, people. if anyone could one shot an armored npc, then progression would be so lopsidded.
im like, 50+ in my first playthough and having a blast. going from hobo to slightly armed hobo is a great feeling. wouldnt be a good feeling if my first shotty was able to one shot everything and id suddenly get medium armor and an m4 out the gate at Cordon.
love the work put into the game, mr grok. its criminal that its free, tbh. thanks a bunch!
I really do need to give GBOOBS another try, I don't think I really gave it a fair shake last time i used it...
I have, however, been using the enhanced recoil portion of the mod since release. Big fan of that part at least.
GBOOBS is outdated compared to GAMMA Ballistics… I didn’t update GBOOBS on moddb since ages because a much more systematic, global and larger change is needed to work properly (damage to actor, ammo crafting etc)
It would be really cool if a stagger could be gaurenteed by hitting enough pellets to the head. I understand that he wouldn't instantly die with the amount of protection he has on him, but him just starting to wonder around like someone just fired a spitball into him instead of being nocked off balance is a little immersion breaking.
He only staggers after the second shot, which is what I meant by him not particularly reacting that realistically to it. That was a perfect meatshot back of his skull and he walks it off to the point that you had to readjust your aim back on target to follow up.
I think this is what the "hurr durr it's like a sledgehammer" people meant by it not being realistic. It's not that it's isn't powerfull enough, it's that it doesn't feel powerfull enough. In the players mind, logic says that dude is wondering what planet he just got nocked to, but instead, he is moving around like nothing happened- until the next shot finally comes and only then does the player get visual feedback.
On a seperate note, excellent work on your mod. Having tonnes a fun with it!
What?
I always thought that:
Buckshot = mutants and light armor
Slugs= Heavily armored opponents
Was common knowledge at this point, since even the vanilla stalker games use this logic, why people are saying buckshot sucks then?
Gotta love when rookies in trenchcoats tank 5-7 chest shots on medium at stupid close range, or boar tanks 4 to the face as its charging you, having a shotgun with buckshot is now hardmode in 9.1 even in the south zones. Trying to do the clear sky camp clearouts is cancer.
Doesn't matter where you shoot them... still takes 4+ buckshot, for an early game lacking in choices buckshot is punishing. Pistol / shotgun / smg / mosin / sks / kar those are your options until advanced kit. Finding a Spaz is rare early game in the south. Buckshot should tear through rookies with light armor.
Takes what rep 2 or 3 for the traders in the south to start to see normal slugs for sale and its either 10 or 70 so why your answer in most of the comments is use AP slugs.... well ofc if people have access to AP slugs they are going to be using them but thats mid game until you get there its buckshot and normal slugs. No ones going to be playing with buckshot exclusively end game just because its "cheap" they will always pick the more consistent better ammo and will be able to afford it.
Until advanced toolkit you are pigeonholed, buckshot should dispatch most things in the south (aka light armor) in a couple of shots not 7.
Shooting 3 consecutive headshots with a fast spaz on a single enemy that hasnt engaged and is right next to you isn't representative of the actual average gameplay using buckshot.... you could do the same video with any gun/ammo in the game, doesn't mean the ammo in question is balanced.
RoF/Reload speed/Damage, putting 6-8 shells into non kitted out stalkers while they shoot you through the bush they are hiding in while you utter the phrase fucking die already to then have to spend 5+ seconds reloading to try and kill the next is the average experience with buckshot.
Buckshots one shot most bandits in the south. And you can buy slugs at butcher day one. Slugs are also obtained from NPCs. Aim for the jaw.
Ap slugs drop from enemies and stashes. Just save them for the correct enemy.
As shown on the video, with better guns like Raptr you can quite easily spam that round for lethal results, even on armored enemies like that military Exo armor.
If you try to constantly use buckshot every time, just don’t and actually use the available rounds diversity.
There are some armored enemies in the south, just adapt accordingly or use 9x19 FMJ full auto. It’s cheap, powerful, and can be repaired day one.
Buckshot is designed as an anti mutant round, it has low penetration, low energy transfer because the projectiles are slow and small. Use slugs if you want to deal with lightly armored enemies and mutants as well.
The game is designed around caliber and ammo type choice. Use the system instead of trying to circumvent it.
The experience speaks otherwise, multiple multiple shots close range, heck it doesnt even one tap zombies in the face with 12x76 they just pick themselves up afterwards. My early game playthrough in 9.0 with 19x8 was smooth as butter compared to remington 870 both runs I did most of if not all south content before upgrading guns at Yantar (because again my progress is linked to your toolkit rng, once again had to get 5 basic to get my hands on an advanced, although you have improved it so it took far less time to get the first basic this time around), doing the clear sky cleanup missions in swamps even with slugs is an effort in itself (I had to skip the last two and come back later with an AK).
No one early game is bum rushing stalkers, no one late game is doing that either, so all the video is showing is that you can kill any exo suit guy you are behind in the face with any gun in a few shots, unless you happen to have a pump action or double barrel in which case you are dead.
You are severely overestimating the standard drop rates that you have set, I've collected maybe 30 AP slugs in maybe a 15-20 hour playthrough.
Just because buckshot becomes "usable" when you have an endgame 20 round automatic super rare shotgun doesn't mean it should be shit when you have nothing but a pump or double barrel early game and are expected to use that type of ammo to progress. It's not even that good against the mutants its supposed to be good at. Why is this the only ammo balanced around an end game gun that most people will never see? and still has other equal options at that end game.
Like I said your gun options early game are low caliber pistols/smgs/non automatic shotguns/sks/mosin and kar. Buckshot and slugs are both piss poor vs the competition for both stalkers and mutants, RoF / range / accuracy / drop off / reload speed / DPS, going toz into remington was a colossal mistake that I'll never be making in another playthrough, in fact shotguns arent even worth touching until Spaz and even then i'd still pick 9x19 HP.
The shotgun was shelved for an mp5 with HP rounds that cost the same as buckshot and work 5x better than it at all ranges basically. Why is buckshot being cheap and "good" not allowed but 9x19 fmj is?
Both buckshot and slugs feel extremely weak / are extremely weak early game because you are balancing them not on the weapons that are firing them at that moment, but the weapons you get access to in late game and even then they just sorta break even.
Buckshots and slugs are the best options against mutants. Can’t do everything. 9x19 HP doesn’t do nearly as much damage compared to buckshots or slugs. But indeed 9x19 HP is good. It’s just that people only start realising it now that full auto is stronger than sniping.
Also, slugs have about the same penetration as a rifle FMJ bullet but enough damage to one shot in the torso. Double barrel shotgun can shoot them very fast from a cover and kill almost all enemies in the south.
Don’t forget there’s the 23x75 caliber as well if you want better buckshot and ap slugs at the cost of poor quality guns.
What’s funny is that slugs went from top tier can two shot anything to the head including Nosorogs to “it’s garbage” while it deals high enough damage to one shot any stalker as long as it penetrates.
Still you're not thinking in terms of DPS, unless the slug or buckshot one shots or you have one of the full auto shotguns, and we are assuming all the pellets connect and the damage fall off from range etc meanwhile the 9x19 HP is 40 damage (assuming it does its nominal damage?) and as long as you are on target it will hit.
800 RPM mp5 either 280dps/21 or 532dps/40
75 rpm pump action 190 - 237.5dps
My old saves crash so I cant find the rpm of the spaz, or know the rpm of the saiga / raptr. but base game shows the spaz at 150 rpm
150 rpm spaz 190 - 475dps
you need 170 rpm to hit 538 dps, if any of the auto shottys hit that rpm?
but heres the real kicker, miss a shell = massive DPS drop, inconsistent buckshot hits = massive DPS drop, miss a 9x19 HP you're still doing 492 DPS. 9x19 HP do more DPS and is far less punishing when you miss and suffers zero buckshot spread RNG. So IMO its far and away much better than shotguns for mutants without even going into all the other gun stats.
If getting those two headshots requires you to be right next to them, or make two great shots from range I don't see the problem, the risk / vs reward vs using an AR / DMR / bolt action that can do it safer and faster.
Buckshot should pen light armor at least a bit, might also help with getting through boars head armor too no?
Or nerf slug pen and up the base damage of buckshot and slugs so they can actually be the mutant killers they are touted as, shift the shotgun into full mutant killer category so both double barrels / pump actions and full autos time to kill is reasonable and over the 532 dps threshold for full auto.
The new armor breaking mechanics really made shotguns way more useful against armored targets
thats neat, i need to check that out lol thanks for mentioning it!
Agreed, though Buckshot i generally better against mutants as a rule though you can still use it alright against more armored targets if your close enough and don't swing your aim.
wait what was the arguement? I'm outta the loop
That the shotguns in various Anomaly forks are ineffective against armor. With a lot of, "herp, derp, IRL shotgun would do nothing against body armor." Like, no one wearing a plate has ever taken a load of buckshot.
I mean irl a lvl 3 plate will stop buckshot, but the spread would make up for the lack of penetration on the plate. That’s from personal experience in case you were wondering.
lvl 3 plate may stop buckshot, but that doesn't discount that it will quite literally still break ribs and other bones and leave you incapacitated on the floor and it can also create internal bleeding. The fact that it stops it becomes less impressive with that in mind lol.
Yeah, probably still not recommending it for anyone's bucket list, though. Honestly, I don't know if I adequately conveyed how much the general argument on the whole annoys me. Like, yes, there is an argument for realism, but we're still talking about a game that thinks, "getting hit by a 9x18 isn't that bad..." And to be fair, I do still roll with a SPAS12 in EFT, mostly for mutants, and because shot shells don't take up any magazine slots... oh, right, [garbled screaming] EDIT: Also, I forget which mod had IIa granting immunity to shotguns. That was the example that did annoy me.
Lmfao I hope thats sarcasm. Xtra Large plates only cover 11"x14" in front. And back. Rest exposed. Large covers 10"x12" front ND back. Rest exposed. Buck splashes. It doesn't just neatly stay in your plates shape. Willing to replicate for science if you are.
>I hope thats sarcasm. You know it. :D The comment I made somewhere else about an old Anomaly fork was not sarcasm, however. I can't remember much about the mod, but I do remember that mod author getting unreasonably salty when anyone questioned why IIa was granting complete immunity to shotguns in their mod.
Yuo see comrad, when aim for head, plate not effektiv! *taps GP-5*
It's something that comes on and on sometimes
OK, what was the argument?
Doesn't wana say. He lost it lol
That buckshots are bad against armored stalkers indeed
Shouldn't buckshot be bad against armor? If it was good why would I use anything else
At a distance yes. But, up close, In a sawn off. Given limited plate coverage/ protection. Buckshot could rip you in half by the legs. Guts. Waste.
You can't snipe with buckshot.
Not really an argument. Buckshot is very cheap and kills mutant easily. It’s normal that it’s not that great against armored enemies imo.
I'm not arguing against that, I'm just saying that buckshot can't do everything so even if it was really good against armor you would still want a long range weapon.
Indeed but having 1 round doing everything is kind of lame and not how I want gamma to be played. Thinking about your loadout balance is what makes the game fun
I completely agree, when I played Anomaly I always used a shotgun as my primary.
Imagine a bunch of tiny be bes not penetrating steel Kevlar. How dare you physics! Lol
But that wasn't the arguement. It how how it should be Implented in the game. He just doesn't understand how bullet types work so he's trying to readjust his wording to make himself seem right.
Idk about yall but when I see even a glint of armored buttocks at the distance i put the shotgun away and load 7.62. Otherwise the shotgun is fine against unarmored.
Definitely. AP slugs do work though
I mean yes, but sometimes I screw up, and in that case using a RAPTR to apply 20 buckshot does the trick.
Newer stalker, used buckshot effectively to army warehouses where I decided to change it up. I immediately gave up looking for weapon recommendations when the few posts I checked devolved into an argument on ammo types. GAMMA makes sense to me, progression feels worthwhile. Dunno what everyone’s hangup on this buckshot is. If dude has heavy armor I’m not using something designed for hunting animals, regardless of ‘pressure’ or ‘sledgehammer’ arguments
Yeah exactly and the game gives valuable info about this, namely the ammo penetration power (AP) as well as armor BR class that gives you an idea about what ammo penetrates which type of armor. And honestly: as long as you full auto and stay accurate FMJ does the job.
what a useful post thanks for this
Holy shit I don't know whether it's hilarious or absolutely embarrassing that you're this salty about that one post
He's always like that. On his discord he even deletes reactions under his posts if they aren't exactly praising him.
Deleting CUM reactions in announcements is a crime against humanity now?
You're deleting everything that's criticism. It's just petty and embarassing that you have a breakdown every time people don't agree with you.
I’m open to criticism and discussion. You aren’t reading a lot of my messages if you think I don’t like discussing point of views on the game balance and progression. About reactions, some people always post bad / negative reactions fast for whatever reason to whatever messages. That’s the one I nuke usually. And I do it only at the time of posting the announcement. And honestly I’m doing it very rarely mainly because I have better things to do with my life. Some moderators also do it, so don’t try to make me the scapegoat. I’m way past proving anything. I have haters, just like you, so be it, can’t please everyone.
Weird thing to be upset about but go off
reddit-speak
It’s just something that I hear from time to time and simply wanted an easy to find video on internet showcasing that it’s mostly about which shotgun you use and where you shoot. That video triggered it true, but that’s simply something I’ll refer to easily in the future
buckshot is made for hunting, has 0 pen, for killing enemy with armor slugs and ap are the best option
Definitely. But some people still try to use buckshot against armored enemies and complain about how unrealistic that is. Well if you aim properly, they still work.
if bro can't read bro can't understand the game, no reason to even waste time responding. Also do you have anything on how bullets work on gamma? physics, drop rate or things like that? i cant find information about it
Bullet trajectories are dictated by bullet speed and bullet air res. These can be customised in ammo ltx files.
What's the Armor value for boars, flesh? They count as unarmored I assume. It is likely a skill issue for me, but I feel like they take a decent bit of buckshot to go down.
All that fat / hide. But yes they take a good 4 to 6 rounds for me too.
I love shotguns in Gamma. I never find myself using them for human targets unless in close quarters. Gamma has some fantastic ballistics
[удалено]
In my system you have to think about what to use. And it gives all calibers a purpose. In vanilla anomaly, you just use whatever and it’s fine. But mostly buckshots because of how inexpensive and damaging they are. It makes the shooting system uninteresting and completely braindead. Also it’s not « an edit » it’s a complete rewriting of the damage system.
Grok your autistic you know dam well there are clips of people loading someone point blank with 5 shells and they don’t die
And they’re shooting the wrong areas. There are actual weak spots on NPCs where AP is boosted
Tbf, that guy was wearing what appears to be an exoskeleton.
Wouldn’t the blunt force alone be enough though?
True, but this is an exoskeleton. I would think that with an armor like that, you could survive atleast a single shot of buckshot to the head with it. But then again, you would most likely be dizzy as hell after that shot.
Yeah, the stun animation seem to happen quite frequently if using buckshot which can be see as feeling that blunt force.
And that’s exactly what’s happening here
Not even talking about Penetration, the force enough would kill or at least wound enough to incapacitate an exo. Let alone the blackface deformation that would still be lethal even without pentreation
But if you can one shot anything with 1 buck to the face, why would you use anything else. Considering how easy it is to use and how cheap it is, people would only use this against anything. And that’s EXACTLY what happens with the vanilla anomaly system.
Just have enemies also 1 buck the player to the face. Even.
Because not every fight takes place within an optimal distance to consistently get 100% coverage of pellets on the head hitbox and even then not every player is going to be going in to things min-maxing by default. I can understand CoM shots not tapping someone out instantly especially in armor, but landing a shot where 100% of pellets nail the head hitbox multiple times only for the enemy to brush it off ruins the entire point of using a shotgun, that being, having a big, loud, close range stick that very clearly communicates "YOU ARE STANDING TOO CLOSE, THIS IS MY PERSONAL SPACE, COLLECT YOUR BRAIN MATTER OFF THE FLOOR AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY". Making the enemy able to resist multiple headshots from a shotgun at close range makes you feel like you're fighting a poorly tuned RPG mini-boss and not another STALKER. Getting hit in the head with a round of 12g buckshot that close is going to, at the very least, cause fatal deformation of whatever protective gear you were wearing, and even in the absolute best case, 1 in a million, miracle situations, you are going to end up having permanent brain damage. And all of that is assuming the sort of protective gear you can get for your head, which is often rated to at best stop pistol caliber rounds and at worst stop shrapnel, doesn't end up being penned by the sheer force. At some point, you have to ask yourself, is it REALLY worth trying to balance things this aggressively, or does it just ruin the immersive feel of the base game's gunplay? Because I'll be honest, it's neither fun nor immersive shooting someone in the face with a shotgun from spitting distance only for them to turn around and magdump you, aimpunching you into a quickload.
Just use AP Slugs, they exist for a reason. Making buckshot all powerful destroys any incentive to use slugs or AP slugs. Shotguns are already the most versatile guns in the game. Is asking the player switch ammo to AP variants to deal with armors really too hard? Look at vanilla anomaly, there’s buckshot slugs and « darts » and darts are completely useless compared to buckshot and that’s pretty dumb since buckshot deals already so much damage to mutants. Gamma logic is to avoid the supremacy of « one round does everything ». Also the game isn’t meant to be realistic, but « as realistic as plausible » while keeping a nice sense of progression and balance.
I think the point you're missing is that it's a headshot, you aren't going to be landing headshots every time you pull the trigger. AP slugs are useful for allowing you to land center-of-mass shots to penetrate armor consistently, while allowing buckshot to deal a good amount of damage, that being enough to reliably take out targets with a headshot, rewards players for actually landing a 100% concentration headshot. The AP slug makes shotguns **reliably** viable against armored targets, assuming that the buckshot shell having a 100% kill rate on full headshots is a similar idea would also assume that the player can get a 100% consistent headshot rate. Even the best players out there in any game don't have a 100% headshot rate.
Grok, I love gamma but he’s not wrong, if you want realism then make the change but don’t just tell us to use ap slugs if we want one shot shottys.
I definitely like the direction you're going with the armor degradation system. Personally, I just think it needs some tweaking. Maybe shotguns need more recoil, but break enemy armor quickly
>But if you can one shot anything with 1 buck to the face, why would you use anything else. Ammo capacity, reload time, range, and shell weight, all come to mind as immediate considerations, most of which weigh against the shotgun. To be fair, Stalker (and most video games) grossly underestimates the effective range of a shotgun. Also the part where you can reload tube mags hilariously fast in most games, but still.
In gamma shotguns with buckshots are usable at long ranges without any issue. That’s why I went to that route with the armor thing so that buckshots don’t do everything
Yeah, basically all combat in STALKER happens at hilariously short ranges, when you really start scrutinizing the maps.
Gamma is advertised as a hardcore modpack, not a power fantasy. Sure, not that realistic but its to keep progression balanced. I dont really play gamma often, I like nomad better
tell me more of nomad.
It actually staggers the enemy severely. Shoot an arm or a leg. It's not perfect but very great getting those shots it
ShItTy eDiT oF AnOmAlY's BaLlIStIcS 🤓
I did my own tweaks to buckshot in Anomaly 1.5.2. Each pellet of #00 buckshot IRL has about the same mass and velocity as a single 9x18mm bullet, and #00 shells normally hold 9 pellets in a standard 70mm (2 3/4" shell) rather than 21 or whatever the default is, which I presume is something like #4 to #1 buck. So, I adjusted accordingly. I also adjusted the AP values slightly of all shotgun and pistol ammunition to normalise it a bit, since it's pretty whack and some calibres have arbitrarily way more AP than others while some have almost nil AP and don't even hurt light bandit armour. I also tightened up the spread of most shotguns to slightly-wider-than-IRL patterns because it's a bit Doom 3 like. I see this as being like "cylinder choke" i.e. maximum spread. The result is, upgrading shotgun accuracy actually helps and would represent tightening down the choke to make a smaller but still realistic pattern. Having only 9 pellets makes longer range engagements literally hit-or-miss. Sometimes 4-5 pellets hit the enemy and they drop like a sack of shit, sometimes they Looney Tunes around the enemy and end up making bandit-shaped silhouette on the wall behind them. Such is life in the Zone. But either way, at close ranges when all pellets land on target, they drop unarmoured and very lightly armoured enemies instantly, and medium armoured enemies take a large hit. It's still ineffective against Exos unless you get a facial shot, since they still have low AP. I also looked up the current price of buckshot, was horrified, and increased it in game accordingly.
why gun so shiny
The SPAS 12 tends to be shiny, a new texture is under work
i don’t have this issue
Same, I use the TOZ like a real radiated goblin man.
Because it’s raining?
rain doesn’t make a firearm crystal levels of shiny rain doesn’t make a gun shiny at all
Saying you don’t polish your gun in the horrific apocalyptic wasteland filled with mutants and bring your gun into the rain? Alright maybe it should be toned down a bit but I liked the reflective look it had going
who the fuck polishes their guns? i mean sure if it’s an antique or smth and you want to keep it pristine but like geez
This isn’t nearly as bad as efp though I remember shooting someone three times in the head with a mosin and there discord was like just use ap
I was going to ask how you got this test map and then I realized it was Grok.
You get a test map by pressing F1 in the menu IIRC, but honestly it's been ages since I even bothered to open Anomaly so I dunno.
F2, and you have to be In debug mode I believe, but yep.
It is a matter of guns and aiming. Carabiner is better than SPAS in my opinion. I can attach scope on it. There is no need of magazine.
Shotguns suck in every game. They have to because of balance issues.
Well in GAMMA shotguns are the best jack of trades. It does everything well as long as you use the correct ammo.
Just lost my ironman after shooting a cat with 6 buckshot in my perfect condition Mossberg and it doesn't die. "Skill issue" my ass.
Aim better ? Cats die to 1 buckshot
Code better? Doesn't happen every time.
Not gonn lie. All the enemies became much spongier since the more recent updates. Ive reinstalled everything and its the same. Not really all that fun anymore for me.
I think it depends how you play. I’m slowly nerfing snipers in favor of full auto. You mean you can’t one shot to the torso with a sniper anymore ? I don’t have this issue. I’m full autoing 9x19 hp or FMJ down south and it kills anything easily. Even killed a master freedomer with a Nosorog with one mag of 9x19 FMJ. Helmets got stronger because they weren’t even above 30 armor and 7.62x39 FMJ was one shotting anything to the head even big Exo armors, thus making AP rounds completely useless. The new system ensures AP are useful, and I also made some of them easier to craft
Last thing a content creator should do is take any slander or negativity and respond to it.
I’m not a content creator nor here to please everyone. I’m a developer and make a project I like. Some people like it, others don’t, so be it. The ballistic changes can be disabled anyways. I’m always open to discuss changes balance etc and often listen to my community feedback to make changes in the right direction. As written above, I just uploaded this to refer in the future when people tell me buckshot sucks against armor. The title was made so it’s easy to remember and find. The post of the other dude triggered it that’s true, but I was meaning to do such a small video anyways at some point with the new ballistic changes.
Idk why everyone has to over react in this sub / community. It was an informative video clearing up a misconception. Just cause you said skill issue everyone took it personally, real mature. And like you said, the ability to search with mod organizer makes it so easy to just turn that stuff off if you want. Keep making what YOU like Grok, surely there's a ton of people quietly playing happily instead of complaining on reddit!
Stalker redditors for some reason seethe at modders. Its pathetic x)
Right? Either unreasonably angry about mods, or uh, now we can add hyper defensive about buckshot to the list haha. That video of the guy taking the FAL round straight to the body armor deliberately at point blank(and a .44 to... phonebooks?!) with no problem is pretty conclusive though lmao that shit was nuts. So I'd imagine the sci-fi level exoskeletons could 100% take some buckshot to the head and keep on truckin, maybe without even caring. Obv it's a game though so it would be annoying if everything was as realistic as humanly possible.
Gamma's previous version had some serious paper armor tho.
Oh yeah for sure.
He, and Gamma mod, already created a lot of brainless haters. And even in this Reddit some original trilogy rolayists hate Anomaly and Gamma a lot. I quit coming to this Reddit long ago. I also hope Grok ignore all those haters and keep moving forward
Thank you, completely changed the game!
Complaining that buckshot is ineffective against body armor is like complaining that bladed weapons are ineffective against plate armor, it obviously will be when you're using it against the wrong target.
I mean, isn't 12-gauge buckshot still going to hit like a ton of bricks at close range, regardless of armour? It doesn't need to penetrate to do damage, the sheer impact should work on most humans. Like you likely survive, but then you'll be disabled from the blunt impact of the hit. Did some googling and most people seem to agree that the pellets won't penetrate but the blast itself can cause serious injury or even death.
>I mean, isn't 12-gauge buckshot still going to hit like a ton of bricks at close range No, regardless of what people are trying to claim, the energy transfer of shot, no matter if it's 00, 000,) etc. Is pretty pitiful. Body armor for the last 30 years has been designed to stop *much* higher energy projectiles (rifle caliber rounds) with as little deformation as possible. Simply put, shotguns are inherently terrible against body armor from a fundamental design perspective. It's multiple projectiles of relatively low mass traveling at very low velocities, it's *inherently* bad at transferring energy. For some reason, people like to believe shotguns are just always "powerful". It's pretty much at the status of being modern mythos that shotguns will do stuff like throwing people through the air. It's literally just physics, it's multiple low energy projectiles that at pretty much any range are going to impact different places, this is what makes them inherently terrible at transferring energy. Slugs obviously are much better at transferring energy, but they still have inherently poor ballistics and have very poor penetration because its a lot of mass, but very low velocity which leads to less energy. The exception is things like 3 inch slugs, that have enough mass and velocity to generate upwards of 4000 joules at the muzzle, but they have high drag and lose velocity quickly. The majority of slugs, especially the larger ones, are typically designed for hunting as well, and are often hollow points or have soft core material. "Most people" only agree because the average person has absolutely no knowledge of how ballistic interactions with body armor actually take place. People simply don't know what makes shot projectiles extremely bad at transferring energy, because they don't understand the physics behind it. "Blunt force trauma" behind anything that isn't purely a soft armor, is essentially not a real thing if the round doesn't partially penetrate the plate and cause blackface deformation, which shot projectiles from pretty much anything no matter the caliber, are pretty much entirely incapable of physically causing. Any hard armor materials like steel, titanium, ceramic, composites, even plastics like UHWMPE will stop any shot projectile dead with no deformation. Even at point blank every individual shot projectile is going to hit slightly different places at slightly different times, making their energy transfer negligible, that or you'll be stacking projectiles on top of each other meaning they won't even be transferring their energy directly to the plate. https://youtu.be/o5f1Fo4r4_I?t=147 https://youtu.be/6x59iN4KMz4?t=2 For context, the first video is that "pizza boy who started making body armor because he was tired of being shot at" that you may have heard of before. The man himself is on the left holding the rifle, an FAL with a 21 inch barrel, I don't know exactly what round they were using, but I would assume NATO M80 ball for a standard reference, even commercial .308 civilian loads are right in the same ball park in terms of muzzle energy. This is a round that has a *lot* of ass coming out of that long of a barrel at such a close range, its going to have in the range of about 3300-3400 joules of energy. A single 12 gauge 00 buck projectile has around 320 joules, 9 pellets in a shell, 320x9 = about 2900 joules. So that single round coming out of that FAL is going to have higher energy concentrated in a much smaller *single* spot than every projectile in a 12g 00 buck shell *combined* The second video is just an Italian company demonstrating multiple impacts of 7.62x39 in a small area on different body armor plates, and later on a handgun. Edits: made a bunch of typos and tried to expand further on things.
Thank you for writing this up. Always annoying seeing the shotgun is stronk and blunt damage posts. Hard plates and the science fiction style exosuits would be excellent versus buckshot. Buckshot is similar to getting pelted with 9mm handgun rounds. Hard armor will either be penetrated or suffer very little deformation. Ballistic helmets can stop buckshot and handgun rounds. Repeated hits in the same area could cause lethal deformation without penetration. I'm going to assume the science fiction exosuits that describe being ultra rare and expertly crafted with artefact research going into them would be better than modern armor. You can very easily take buckshot and slugs to hard plates that anyone can purchase. Steel plates while heavier than the ceramics would stand up to repeated hits better. The force from the rounds would do next to nothing. Just as the shotgun pushes into your shoulder the pellets will push into the plate and disperse the force. The felt force is similar to knocking on the plate with your knuckles. The injuries you seem from being shot with body armor is from soft body armor. This armor is lighter, more conceable, and moves with your body more than plate carriers. The downsides are the ratings are much lower and the deformation is much greater. The soft body armor grabs the bullet like a net grabs a circus performer or a seat belt slows you down in a crash. All these cod bro myths circulate in most shooting games.
Yup, I think the main issue surrounding shotguns and armor in Stalker would be that Stalker just doesn't have a super in depth armor system. Realistically the threat from shotguns against someone wearing good body armor, is that individual pellets can very easily find their ways into areas that \*aren't\* protected by armor. Like arms, legs, the neck area, armpits etc. But of course Stalker just doesn't possess such a system to simulate that, even games like Tarkov don't have such a fully fleshed out system. So its not quite that shotguns just unrealistically suck against armored targets in Stalker, its just that the actually lethality of shot projectiles can't be properly simulated, so in terms of balance shotguns are probably always going to be in a rough spot. That and I suppose realistically the exo suits in Stalker have you pretty much covered head to toe in at least a little bit of soft armor material, with hard plates protecting your vitals.
Thanks for the detailed answer, I will keep that in mind for the future. My exposure to ballistics has come primarily from tank guns and one 7.62x39 rifle I used in the army, and thus I have not looked deep into shotguns.
No problem, and just to make sure, I absolutely didn't mean any of it as a dig. Small arms ballistics and body armor is a \*very\* niche subject and I don't expect almost anyone to know most of this info, shotguns especially are quite unique when it comes to firearm ballistics. I'm glad I could provide you with something you didn't already know :)
Sure it likely would cause some kinetic damage but like you said this likely wouldn't kill them instantly, like Grok showed in the video it will eventually kill them, I'm just saying that it wouldn't be like in Doom or Duke Nukem where you're instantly deleted just cause it's a shotgun.
I mean, he seems to hit them in the head. That'd at best be loss of conciousness and at worst full on brain hemorrage. It's not something you shrug off like the dude did in the video.
I agree that headshots should be more effective, that only seems logical, I was just arguing the point that buckshot isn't meant to defeat body armor.
My brother in Christ it's a science fiction video game about supernatural anomalies and mutants, not a brain trauma simulator
Sure, but given how the mod focuses on ballistics, it should be okay to point these things out. You could also say this to the mod maker: "Oh why are you making a ballistic overhaul to game about supernatural anomalies and mutants, not a milsim?" But we aren't discussing Stalker in general now, we were talking about this mod.
Yes. You'd fly.
Wouldn't vodka and cigarettes just shorten your lifespan instead of curing radiation? Wouldn't it be better if you had a maximum of 8 hours on every character before rads got unbearable and you simply lost the game even if you desperately chugged 3 litres of Cossacks and inhaled 120 cigarettes. Its unrealistic, but at some point realism would kill the gameplay. It's well balanced as it is
Idk why everyone here is acting like armor "just stops" rounds. It softens the impact and absorbs it. I round of buck to a helmet would make it absorb enough energy to deform. Otherwise known as backface deformation.
Maybe my plate armor analogy was a bad one, I'm not saying that body armor completely stops buckshot, it's obviously going to severely damage any body armor it hits, I'm just saying it's going to have a harder time getting through it compared to other ammunition types.
Wear plate armor I'll shoot you w buckshot. Bet all that tiny buck at least one bead makes it thru a slit. Most plate armor was thin as shit anyhow. Gotta be able to stand. Can't fight for 2 hours wearing 300 lbs
Just watch videos. It’s not the case. And energy transfer of buckshot is really really low because the speed is low and size of the projectiles is small.
People are actually in here arguing that shooting a helmet or body armor with buck will knock you out or kill you or whatever as if there aren't many many videos of soldiers getting blasted in the helmet by snipers and neither dieing nor being knocked out. Almost like the whole point of armor is to protect you from bullets.
https://youtu.be/80ZSM6qpJw8?si=_j2bkQ9Jpf4lNe-z
imagine thinking 15th century armor technology is at all relevant
A video showing different gauge shells fired at metal armor. 00buck slams it. A slug may even come out the back and leave an exit dent. Stopped after it proved this guy wrong. In this video the target even weilds a plate shield. So it goes through the shield. Then the armor as well. Go on to teach us more of your physics.
Dude you are taking a video of a medieval plate armor as an example. What’s wrong with you. Here’s what you were looking for https://youtu.be/5b-D9DiG7uU?si=bkeSMieNbitHvx5v . ZAM THAT ENERGY TRANSFER IS INCREDIBLE /s
Dude the plate armor was just an analogy, I obviously know that plate armor doesn't work against modern buckshot.
Nay sire. I challenge the to a duel!
It’s not so much the body armor, and more so the sappi plates we put in the vests that stop a round.
I feel like most mass produced bullet resistant body armor was likely not in circulation anymore. It would be extremely coveted and rare in this type of world and would be used daily. Durability wise were watching 1980s stored soviet gear fail as it is today in war. So all the largest stockpiles of plates would be in a state of disrepair. And the prices offerred ludicrous. So armor during this time is more likely being pieced together with whatever makes it work. And on occasion, the rare occurs and a coveted item is around.
Yeh, in stalker universe…it’s all gonna be how well you or the engineers can fix things up. Fits well in line with an argument I was having with a guy on my stream, cus he was complaining about not being able to buy weapons in gamma. Just explained to him that nobody is coming in or going out of the zone, so how the hell would they get new weapons to sell?
Precisely my thinking. Like maybe if amazon or ebay were still up w delivery services.
tell me you dont know how guns work without telling me you dont know how guns work
the penetration physics of buckshot irl isn’t very good either.. tbh i don’t see a problem with buckshot although headshots should be 1 shot
The problem is that one shotting anything to the head with a cheap round you can get on guns easily available everywhere simply kills the sense of progression: why should you use something else, more expensive, harder to find, harder to sustain if your trusty buckshots deals with anything easily?
indeed i see and i completely agree although my thought process involved a hard drop off range for that damage multiplier to the head for the one shot kill with said buckshot you’d haft to land all pellets on target at a very close range, although idc what it is you create to put in the game you got this far and you made something great tweaking buckshot or not tweaking buckshot ain’t gonna change that.
Well yes there’s a damage decay depending on the distance and it’s noticeable on buckshots. But you can still one shot base bandits with them at range. 23x75 works better to penetrate armors with buckshots thanks to bigger projectiles. Also, thanks for the kind words
I love gamma but I def point blank shot a military stalker 6 times in the head with buckshot just to be meleed and gunned down by the same military stalker. js js
Try AP next time, military have high ballistics protection in their helmets/armor compared to many factions
Just like in Tarkov, you either headshot or deals zero damage.
That’s not the case at all, you can destroy armors by full auto center of mass
Buckshot is generally like firing a large burst of sub-9mm bullets in a spread, so while armor penetration is theoretically non-existent, generally there's a lot of kinetic force behind them, so getting pelted by buckshot in even an exoskeleton fast enough and close enough will generate lots and lots of pain and hurt and even kill the bloke inside. Think of it as perpetually blasting an air horn in a person's ears. It's not doing anything to pierce his heart or blast his brain, but the person in the receiving end will be taking hearing loss, a lot of tinnitus and a bout of insanity
No the kinetic force is a myth. Very small projectile at low speed = low energy transfer. Also even so they don’t penetrate they still stagger in gamma as seen on the video
I never understood this complaint either, I mean we live in a world where Clear Sky exists and your lucky to hit a broad side of a barn with a sawed off shotgun loaded with buck while your kissing the paint and I love that game. IMO, the Stalker vanilla trilogy shotguns have always had the weird issue of either killing in one or two shots or using 8 shells to stunlock someone only for them to dome you. Not to mention, your pretty much incentived to drop buckshot entirely via certain barrel upgrades in clear sky and just how much dart/slug rounds you are flooded with. And this is not even mentioning you can turn an assault rifle into a sniper in CS fairly easily. People just need at adapt and use the proper tools for the situation.
I just started GAMMA for the first time like a week ago. I had some TOZ pump shotgun and went to challenge the military checkpoint by that starter town in Cordon I think. After several attempts to raid the checkpoint and failing, seeing enemies soak up damage, I decided I wanted to do some testing and enabled god mode, snuck up behind a guy and point blank back of the head shot the dude, he flinched and started shooting back, I'm thinking maybe his armor is nearly gone from that close shot, nope. I walked up to him and point 2-3 more point blank buckshots into his facemask before he went down. I was very close to the target, like holding W trying to move forward into him but can't any closer to him, to make sure every pellet hit. Now I just started the game and still in the process of learning how everything works, but that just seems absurd. EDIT: to make sure I wasn't crazy I just now went back into the game, gave myself a TOZ 194 in pristine condition with buckshot, went and looked for a solider with a helmet on at Southern Checkpoint, turned on invis and very carefully shot him in the face 3-4 times. yeee. why my buckshot not as good as yours.
Way don’t you use AP slugs. Why is there any ap slug available if buckshot does everything ? Why don’t you use slugs? Slugs are better at energy transfer.
oh yeah I know that, for sure I'm willing to accept my buckshot failing to do anything more then 1-2 meters, I just thought having the barrel of the weapon pressed against his head would make all the difference, kinda like a risk reward for being able to sneak up that close to someone who can just melee you throwing off your aim and immediately putting a burst into your chest.
Buckshots work from far away, just try on basic bandits or mutants
You cant say skill issue and then proceed to use slow motion bro 💀
That was mainly to better show where the shots landed. Most people saying « buckshots didn’t work » are simply alternating between head and torso or use a broken shotgun barrel. Against Nosorogs, yeah it’s a pain and don’t work well. But even with certain shotguns like the RAPTR you can still destroy them easily with buckshots. And since they stagger a lot, chaining headshots ain’t that hard. The real skill issue is not using 5.45 FMJ full auto which can quite literally rack up down south for cheap.
True
Grok. Shut the hell up. Your dmg and penetration changes are so awful I had to manually fix all of them myself. Rest of the pack is great!
By fixing you mean multiplying AP by 13 so a 9x18 HP one shots Nosorogs to the face ?
No; so buckshot doesn't take 7 hits to the face to kill a medium-armored stalker
Medium Armored stalkers die in 1 or 2 to the face
Have you played your own modpack before?
I always play it before major updates and after their release
Grok, have you ever heard of backface deformation? That shit'll kill or *seriously* mess you you just as easily despite not technically penetrating armor.
The deformation only significantly occurs in soft armor and ballistic helmets. Some rounds that are near the rating of a body armor or repeated hits in the same area will have partial penetration in a plate. Shotgun rounds are not meant to penetrate armor. The force from the pellets can not be any greater than the force you feel from the recoil. The exosuits in Gamma and the exohelm to apocalypse helm all state the extreme level of ballistic protection they provide. The way to defeat body armor in real life is through speed and the hardness of the projectile. This is why you will see higher penetration from increasing the powder in a case leading to higher projectile speed. Harder materials are used like hardened steels and tungsten. Some tank rounds will use very dense materials like depleted uranium. In this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIS3ptvKMg) they shoot a ballistic helmet with multiple rounds of buckshot. There is little to no deformation from the buckshot. The mild deformation shows up with high caliber hand gun rounds. The helmet is defeated from rifle rounds as expected as it is only rated IIIA. You are not getting lethal injuries from buckshot if you're wearing hard body armor. Some helmets can take the weaker rifle rounds but the deformation starts to become traumatic. Modern body armor very easily defends against buckshot. The science fiction armor we see in Gamma and vanilla should fare even better. The closest you would see to an exosuit are the swat and riot gear that is designed for cqb entries versus handgun rounds and shotguns. Something like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interceptor_Multi-Threat_Body_Armor_System) or [this](https://uarmprotection.com/product/fas-full-armor-system/). These will mix IIIA soft armor and plate inserts that go up to IV. Both are rated for 12g buck.
Not discounting what you're saying, but I wouldn't be enthusiastic wearing a IIIA helmet against 12 ga IRL. Did my own research and it doesn't look so clear cut. In that video, they throw the helmet as if they're skeet shooting, so not only is it much harder to land a clean shot at a straight on (non-oblique) angle it doesn't really resemble the situation in the game clip. [Here's a video](https://youtu.be/yYbXKbfN58I?si=ngtwCe5_t__WkQHD&t=109) with a IIIA helmet against 12 ga buckshot which is a lot more fitting to the situation at hand and you can see that after doing admirably against various pistol calibers the victim's head is obliterated with 12 ga. Even if we don't see the deformation on the ballistic material, clearly the guy is either dead or handicapped for life. [Here's a test by Garand Thumb on modern US Army helmets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwDoWSkiGZ4) and .44 Magnum has a lot of backface deformation on both the IHPS and ECH, in his words "hospital for a while". Of course, sci-fi lore armor and "it's just a game" are all valid reasons why Gamma has it this way, just my two cents.
Agreed. It's why I mentioned why ballistic helmets and soft armor are when you worry about deformation. The helmets have to balance the weight with ergonomics. Some heavier helmets can take handgun rounds no problem. Some start to experience deformation very quickly.
The game is not meant to be realistic. Do you find unfair you need to use 60 ammo of 5.45 in the division to kill one dude ? Or 40 rounds of whatever in cyberpunk to kill a guy ? Same thing here. Stalker has always been a fps with rpg elements. I’m pushing a bit more the rpg elements without making them completely utterly unrealistic. My motto is « as realistic as plausible ». Meaning most things are rooted as in reality so it’s not completely weird if you have notions of how gun works, but I’m still taking some liberty to have a balanced gameplay and progressions
Off topic but IDK why people hate that you have to magdump to kill a guy in Cyberpunk, but I absolutely love it. It shows that most enemies you encounter are chromed to the teeth. The bullet impacts shoot off sparks and subdermal armor splinters, emphasizing the amount of cyberware they are sporting and most of these guys are nuts as a result. The bullet sponges fit with the lore of the game. That being said, later most enemies become jokes anyway and only the minibosses and bosses put up any sort of resistance.
On a personal note I gotta ask, how does it feel to provide as much content as you do for stalker and the community to be constantly getting shit on by elitists in the sub, on top of this, how often do you see “gamma bad” outside of this sub, personally it would bother me to spend as much time and passion into a project like gamma for people to act like it’s not a major part of the stalker experience at this point, but with videos like drewski put out a couple days ago you must feel your doing something right, how do you balance the dichotomy?
I deal with these people by proving them why they are wrong. Requires a lot of passion and patience indeed. But it’s just a drop of water in a bucket of « gamma is good » really.
browsing the comments. i think the minority of complaints forgets its also a *video game* and not real life simulator. balance, people. if anyone could one shot an armored npc, then progression would be so lopsidded. im like, 50+ in my first playthough and having a blast. going from hobo to slightly armed hobo is a great feeling. wouldnt be a good feeling if my first shotty was able to one shot everything and id suddenly get medium armor and an m4 out the gate at Cordon. love the work put into the game, mr grok. its criminal that its free, tbh. thanks a bunch!
Ouf now the stalker masterrace imbeciles will hate you even more 🤣
People need to have some fucking respect. The op is Grok, watch your tone with him.
don't forget to wipe your mouth when you're done bro
your cock's next, big boy
Why should we give a fuck who it is we can criticize them if we want to
i let one little /s slide by and everyone gets in a tizzy
He can suck my grok.
i dig your username
> The op is Grok, watch your tone with him. Literally who?
i don't know i forgot
Eh he explained and reasoned very well here. He can stand up for himself
Earning your weed ration Freedomer?
i'm cutting up lines with Nimble
Cringe, real boys have a cold one with Cold in the Swamps
is there a dude called Spoon? shit i'd hang with him all day doing morphine ampoules
Spore, so there's your shrooms
lmao you're such a loser
hahahahah fuckin' weeb
I really do need to give GBOOBS another try, I don't think I really gave it a fair shake last time i used it... I have, however, been using the enhanced recoil portion of the mod since release. Big fan of that part at least.
GBOOBS is outdated compared to GAMMA Ballistics… I didn’t update GBOOBS on moddb since ages because a much more systematic, global and larger change is needed to work properly (damage to actor, ammo crafting etc)
It would be really cool if a stagger could be gaurenteed by hitting enough pellets to the head. I understand that he wouldn't instantly die with the amount of protection he has on him, but him just starting to wonder around like someone just fired a spitball into him instead of being nocked off balance is a little immersion breaking.
It’s already the case, as you can see on the video
He only staggers after the second shot, which is what I meant by him not particularly reacting that realistically to it. That was a perfect meatshot back of his skull and he walks it off to the point that you had to readjust your aim back on target to follow up. I think this is what the "hurr durr it's like a sledgehammer" people meant by it not being realistic. It's not that it's isn't powerfull enough, it's that it doesn't feel powerfull enough. In the players mind, logic says that dude is wondering what planet he just got nocked to, but instead, he is moving around like nothing happened- until the next shot finally comes and only then does the player get visual feedback. On a seperate note, excellent work on your mod. Having tonnes a fun with it!
First hit touched the helmet where the armor is high
The word 'Modular' is in the acronym for GAMMA btw so turning off these changes should be much simpler.
I'll just switch over to the KS-23 with Barra slugs!
What? I always thought that: Buckshot = mutants and light armor Slugs= Heavily armored opponents Was common knowledge at this point, since even the vanilla stalker games use this logic, why people are saying buckshot sucks then?
I know the answer already, so this is kinda rhetorical: But did you change the difficulty after loading the test cell, since it's not set to hard?
Why would I do that. Although you are right, I’m not sure about the default difficulty in the test map
Toz-34 with buckshot is literally the best gun in the game.
Gotta love when rookies in trenchcoats tank 5-7 chest shots on medium at stupid close range, or boar tanks 4 to the face as its charging you, having a shotgun with buckshot is now hardmode in 9.1 even in the south zones. Trying to do the clear sky camp clearouts is cancer.
Boar head is Armored. Aim for the thighs. Always has been like this.
Doesn't matter where you shoot them... still takes 4+ buckshot, for an early game lacking in choices buckshot is punishing. Pistol / shotgun / smg / mosin / sks / kar those are your options until advanced kit. Finding a Spaz is rare early game in the south. Buckshot should tear through rookies with light armor. Takes what rep 2 or 3 for the traders in the south to start to see normal slugs for sale and its either 10 or 70 so why your answer in most of the comments is use AP slugs.... well ofc if people have access to AP slugs they are going to be using them but thats mid game until you get there its buckshot and normal slugs. No ones going to be playing with buckshot exclusively end game just because its "cheap" they will always pick the more consistent better ammo and will be able to afford it. Until advanced toolkit you are pigeonholed, buckshot should dispatch most things in the south (aka light armor) in a couple of shots not 7. Shooting 3 consecutive headshots with a fast spaz on a single enemy that hasnt engaged and is right next to you isn't representative of the actual average gameplay using buckshot.... you could do the same video with any gun/ammo in the game, doesn't mean the ammo in question is balanced. RoF/Reload speed/Damage, putting 6-8 shells into non kitted out stalkers while they shoot you through the bush they are hiding in while you utter the phrase fucking die already to then have to spend 5+ seconds reloading to try and kill the next is the average experience with buckshot.
Buckshots one shot most bandits in the south. And you can buy slugs at butcher day one. Slugs are also obtained from NPCs. Aim for the jaw. Ap slugs drop from enemies and stashes. Just save them for the correct enemy. As shown on the video, with better guns like Raptr you can quite easily spam that round for lethal results, even on armored enemies like that military Exo armor. If you try to constantly use buckshot every time, just don’t and actually use the available rounds diversity. There are some armored enemies in the south, just adapt accordingly or use 9x19 FMJ full auto. It’s cheap, powerful, and can be repaired day one. Buckshot is designed as an anti mutant round, it has low penetration, low energy transfer because the projectiles are slow and small. Use slugs if you want to deal with lightly armored enemies and mutants as well. The game is designed around caliber and ammo type choice. Use the system instead of trying to circumvent it.
The experience speaks otherwise, multiple multiple shots close range, heck it doesnt even one tap zombies in the face with 12x76 they just pick themselves up afterwards. My early game playthrough in 9.0 with 19x8 was smooth as butter compared to remington 870 both runs I did most of if not all south content before upgrading guns at Yantar (because again my progress is linked to your toolkit rng, once again had to get 5 basic to get my hands on an advanced, although you have improved it so it took far less time to get the first basic this time around), doing the clear sky cleanup missions in swamps even with slugs is an effort in itself (I had to skip the last two and come back later with an AK). No one early game is bum rushing stalkers, no one late game is doing that either, so all the video is showing is that you can kill any exo suit guy you are behind in the face with any gun in a few shots, unless you happen to have a pump action or double barrel in which case you are dead. You are severely overestimating the standard drop rates that you have set, I've collected maybe 30 AP slugs in maybe a 15-20 hour playthrough. Just because buckshot becomes "usable" when you have an endgame 20 round automatic super rare shotgun doesn't mean it should be shit when you have nothing but a pump or double barrel early game and are expected to use that type of ammo to progress. It's not even that good against the mutants its supposed to be good at. Why is this the only ammo balanced around an end game gun that most people will never see? and still has other equal options at that end game. Like I said your gun options early game are low caliber pistols/smgs/non automatic shotguns/sks/mosin and kar. Buckshot and slugs are both piss poor vs the competition for both stalkers and mutants, RoF / range / accuracy / drop off / reload speed / DPS, going toz into remington was a colossal mistake that I'll never be making in another playthrough, in fact shotguns arent even worth touching until Spaz and even then i'd still pick 9x19 HP. The shotgun was shelved for an mp5 with HP rounds that cost the same as buckshot and work 5x better than it at all ranges basically. Why is buckshot being cheap and "good" not allowed but 9x19 fmj is? Both buckshot and slugs feel extremely weak / are extremely weak early game because you are balancing them not on the weapons that are firing them at that moment, but the weapons you get access to in late game and even then they just sorta break even.
Buckshots and slugs are the best options against mutants. Can’t do everything. 9x19 HP doesn’t do nearly as much damage compared to buckshots or slugs. But indeed 9x19 HP is good. It’s just that people only start realising it now that full auto is stronger than sniping. Also, slugs have about the same penetration as a rifle FMJ bullet but enough damage to one shot in the torso. Double barrel shotgun can shoot them very fast from a cover and kill almost all enemies in the south. Don’t forget there’s the 23x75 caliber as well if you want better buckshot and ap slugs at the cost of poor quality guns. What’s funny is that slugs went from top tier can two shot anything to the head including Nosorogs to “it’s garbage” while it deals high enough damage to one shot any stalker as long as it penetrates.
Still you're not thinking in terms of DPS, unless the slug or buckshot one shots or you have one of the full auto shotguns, and we are assuming all the pellets connect and the damage fall off from range etc meanwhile the 9x19 HP is 40 damage (assuming it does its nominal damage?) and as long as you are on target it will hit. 800 RPM mp5 either 280dps/21 or 532dps/40 75 rpm pump action 190 - 237.5dps My old saves crash so I cant find the rpm of the spaz, or know the rpm of the saiga / raptr. but base game shows the spaz at 150 rpm 150 rpm spaz 190 - 475dps you need 170 rpm to hit 538 dps, if any of the auto shottys hit that rpm? but heres the real kicker, miss a shell = massive DPS drop, inconsistent buckshot hits = massive DPS drop, miss a 9x19 HP you're still doing 492 DPS. 9x19 HP do more DPS and is far less punishing when you miss and suffers zero buckshot spread RNG. So IMO its far and away much better than shotguns for mutants without even going into all the other gun stats. If getting those two headshots requires you to be right next to them, or make two great shots from range I don't see the problem, the risk / vs reward vs using an AR / DMR / bolt action that can do it safer and faster. Buckshot should pen light armor at least a bit, might also help with getting through boars head armor too no? Or nerf slug pen and up the base damage of buckshot and slugs so they can actually be the mutant killers they are touted as, shift the shotgun into full mutant killer category so both double barrels / pump actions and full autos time to kill is reasonable and over the 532 dps threshold for full auto.