When shot in the leg

[Harry Cremaster]

You can sure as hell assume, however, that if someone got shot but wasn't killed instantly (instantly in this case means a CNS or heart hit) that they would NOT suddenly stop whatever they were doing and stand/lay there completely immobile.

If someone got hit in a manner that would make them bleed out within a short amount of time or make them completely inable to walk (pelvis hit would probably be both), they should be rendered as killed in-game.

I would like to see a system where any wound that is not "immediately lethal", the player can still fight on for a period of time at a decreased level of ability. This is a compromise to the Operation Flashpoint system where you are wounded forever and you cant walk you don't die spontaneously from your injury. This really ****ed when you didn't have a nade to kill yourself.

As an example, say you get shot in the pelvis. You cannot walk effectively and you will probably bleed out within a few minutes but you should be able to fire off a couple rounds in a defensive manuever before you die.

Currently in-game, this wound would kill you immediately because you are "no longer an effective fighter". But I would argue that you could be a semi-effective fighter for a period of time before you pass out and die.

So I would suggest:
1) Wounds decrease the effectiveness of the body part affected. ie. Shot to leg causes you to fall after a couple of limping steps. A grazing wound doesnt affect you at all ( Why would it? Its just a graze.)

2) With the exeption of instant kill shots (head, heart, chest), the wounded player should stay alive for a limited period of time (30-60 seconds). Maybe having the screen fade to black or red. But meanwhile you can still fire at your enemy in a defensive manuever.

 

[Crim]

If a bullet hits you square in the heart, you've still got an average of 14 seconds to live. Bullets, except in certain cases where the central nervous system is shot, do not kill instantly.

The switch from fullpowered rifle rounds to intermediate cartridges was mainly due to the question of weight and controllable recoil when firing quickly. Not because a full powered rifle round was too effective. Indeed, the opposite may be the case, as intermediate assault rifle cartridges increase the hit probability of a soldier by allowing him to fire more rounds and quicker than if he were using the bigger cartridges.

The 7.62x39mm-and-5.45x39mm rounds used by guns such as the AK family of assault rifles tend to yaw like a mother****er once they hit flesh. This increases wounding potential, and also expends all or most of its ballistic energy in to the target. This means very little of the bullet's power is wasted, and the wound channel is also bigger.

A full-powered rifle round might pass directly through the target leaving nothing but a very thin wound channel in its wake. 8mm isn't that big. This, of course, isn't as big a problem as it is for things like the 5.56 cartridge which can lose the velocity it needs to fragment very quickly indeed with shorter barrels.

For almost all calibers of small arms, shot placement is key. If you get shot in the lung, it doesn't matter if the hole is 8mm wide or 5.56mm, you're still not going to die in a hurry.

The only thing that can well-and-truly put someone down in a single shot to anywhere in the chest is a 12ga-or-better shotgun firing 3-inch magnum slugs from under 100 yards.

That said, full-sized rifle rounds still do plenty of damage. They just don't always kill instantly.

The fact of the matter is that if a bullet does not hit a vital, blood-bearing organ or the central nervous system, death will not come quickly to whatever you just shot.

Extremities such as the legs and arms don't have enough mass or thickness to allow the bullets to do the most damage. Bones are much tougher than some people here give them credit for.

A full-sized rifle cartridge still does a hell of a lot more damage than an intermediate, however.

 

[Reddog]

Good post crim, remember though you've also got to throw shock into the equation on top of it.

The important thing for everyone to realise here is that the effects of being shot are not really predictable in terms of how long the person hit can take to go down for good, or whether they will at all. There are instances of people taking incredible amounts of damage and somehow surviving and then others who have shut down straight away.

I think what RO has now is a good compromosie, if there are to be any changes though my suggestions would be;

- A wound to the leg of someone on the move doesn't stop them straight away, instead their movement tapers off to the 'hobbling speed' we have now. This would eliminate that 'stopped by a brick wall 1 meter from cover' thing.

- Debilitation of limbs affected, ie. increased sway after arm wounds, slowed movement speed after leg hits, even slowed stance transition between prone, crouching and standing when your leg is injured.

- Good old Flashpoint style 'legs shot out from under you' debilitation, but this can only happen when both legs have been heavily wounded. Think about it, chances are when you get wounded that heavily you're in a hot place anyway and are likely not to be alive too much longer, it would just add a nice desperate fighting for your life effect. So many times in OFP I fought like a madman after having my legs shot to hell