Yesterdays patch included a major revamp of trajectories, damage & penetration for the following weapons:

• 300 Rifles
• .30-06 Rifles
• 8×57 Rifles
• .308 Rifle & Handgun
• .270 Rifles
• .243 Rifles
• .357 Revolvers
• .44 Revolvers
• .454 Revolvers
• .50 Cal Muzzleloader Round Ball
• 12 GA Shotgun Slug
• 12 GA Buckshot

Kinetic Energy

The primary change for all these weapons is that they now use kinetic energy derived from our advanced trajectory system as the basis for their damage & penetration calculations instead of the old legacy system of linearly reducing velocity that did not take into account things like air resistance, bullet shape and weight.

This system has been applied to most new weapons since the release of the 9.3 Rifle, but until now there has not been enough time to convert the old weapons, as a lot of research and experimentation was needed to make sure we got things right.

Air Resistance

While this change mostly affects damage & penetration due to the fact that all weapons already use the advanced trajectory system for things like bullet drop, there have been some additional minor tweaks, primarily involving adding more precision to how air resistance is calculated. I expect that it will be mostly noticeable for large calibre weapons such as handguns, slug & the muzzleloader, although as zeroing has been updated to compensate for the changes in bullet drop it may only be noticeable at very long distances.

Rifles

Penetration and base damage mostly remain the same as before for most rifles as they worked fairly well with the linear system, however, you can expect somewhat more base damage from .300 & .270 rifles, which in turn means quicker deaths at the cost of trophy integrity (better reflecting calibre & bullet weight).

Handguns, Muzzleloader Round Ball, Slug & Buckshot

Previously these weapons had very high base damage and very low penetration. This has now been reversed to reflect how they commonly work in real life. The result is that poorly placed shots become less lethal while well-placed shoots are more likely to result in things like double-lung shots vs. permitted species. It also means that it should be easier to get good trophy integrity values using these weapons as this number is dependent on base damage.

Legacy Weapons

So, are all weapons now converted to this new glorious system? Sadly no, all arrow based weapons still use the old linear system as well as both 12 GA & 20 GA birdshot. But, the good news is that I am currently looking into converting these weapons as well and that by doing so we may finally be able to address some of the realism problems that have been plaguing these weapons since they were first introduced to the game.