Forum Discussion

Anonymous

6 years ago

Approved

Charge Rifle vs Havoc and Select Fire

Trying to understand what the thought process was behind creating the charge rifle, when we all know the Havoc with select fire is pretty dead and could have done with this buff. Why didn't we just ...

discussion

Biochemikas

6 years ago

@DYSPROssiumI have no idea what those numbers for speed mean, but from my tests they have almost absolutely no correlation with reality ingame (e.g., mastiff bullets are actually faster than wingman).
That may be initial bullet velocity (in some imaginary units), or some coefficient, but apparently that's not the only number determining bullet travel ingame, e.g., the may be very significant velocity drop over distance and that varies greatly between weapons.

"There is no difference between Wingman and Longbow"
Good joke. XD
Have you ever USED the weapons? You can write a poem in your head before a mid-long range wingman shot reaches it's destination. Even R99 bullets are significantly faster.

(At 750m, after shooting wingman, I switched to Kraber, ADS'ed and still had to wait a while before I saw the bullet hit... - maybe the poem would be just a few lines, but could certainly do it)

Anyway, numbers on paper really don't matter (unless you have ALL the relevant numbers (actual initial velocity and velocity drop curve)), what matters is what actually happens in game. And I can assure you, L-STAR bullets are in no way slow. Go test it yourself.
Also L-stars bullets are enormous, so you really wouldn't need to lead your targets at close range, even if the bullets were as slow as you think them to be.

The muzzle flash was a huge problem for L-star when it had no sight, now it doesn't feel any different from havoc or devotion (which are flashy, but definitely usable).

P.S. Muzzle flash IS a generally big problem in Apex altogether, but that's a completely different topic.

The only reason why I (and probably most of everyone else) usually avoid the L-star and/or fail with it is that I'm too trigger happy and I consistently overheat it (I just can't force myself to stop at 8-10 shots, even if all I need to do is let go of LMB for a millisecond...). But that's really my problem, not the weapon's. L-star is a heavily underestimated monster weapon.

If you think that finding L-star in package is a disappointment, then now honestly try to imagine how you would feel finding a CR (in it's current state, not buffed) in it... Most ppl don't even pick it up as world spawn, so you can't actually honestly think it would be fine in a care package...

DYSPROssium

Hero (Retired)

6 years ago

Hello @Biochemikas !

You're right, I made the mistake of mixing up some information of the slow-down effect of ammo types with the actual projectile speed. 😞

So lets correct that.

I found the Reddit thread I was pulling my info from. Especially from the developer comments made there. I will put them down as bullet points:

Energy ammo weapons have the faster projectile speed and lowest bullet drop in any category of weapons.
The shotguns have the lowest projectile speed.
No attachment (other than havoc single fire) affects bullet travel speed.

So after some digging online, I found all the stats from the weapons. I created a graph below which shows the bullet travel speed of the different weapons. I coloured the different ammo types in their colours. Also, note that there is no mention anywhere that the velocity of bullets drops over distance. The actual bullet drops, but not the velocity.

Some observations

The L-star has definitely one of the slowest velocities in the game as it sits right there between the shotguns.
As you correctly said, the wingman shots travel way more slowly than the longbow one! Maybe I should indeed start writing poems instead.
Shotgun projectile speeds are very low.
I wasn't expected such a big difference between the prowler and flatline or hemlok.
Energy ammo weapons have the highest projectile speed for sure.
Snipers have in general a higher bullet

Of course, bullet velocity doesn't say everything, but it definitely interesting to compare the weapons!

Biochemikas
6 years ago
And again, those numbers don't correspond to reality, unless that's some terminal minimum velocity or sth. A 310m LSTAR hit takes ~0.6-0.7 sec (my measurements weren't very precise), so 440 m/s at minimum. If we assume there's velocity drop over distance, the initial velocity has to be even higher.
Flatline's 310m time is somewhere between 0.7-0.75 sec, so it's actually slower than LSTAR over this distance, yet you would think it had to be 2x faster...
I couldn't test any shorter distance, because I didn't want to bother with replays and slow-motion time measurement, but I would assume heavy weapons actually have higher initial velocity, but extremely high deceleration, while energy weapons have very little (or none at all) deceleration. So I guess it is possible that at 50m, L-STAR would indeed be much slower, but honestly 0.05 or 0.1 sec really doesn't make that much difference - you still lead less than 1 body width (1m in Apex is actually very short - ~1 body width; at 7.5m/s move speed, you would need to lead 0.7m with 0.1 sec travel time = less than 1 body width)...
So again, don't trust datamined numbers if you don't know what they stand for. And most definitely don't make gameplay assumptions on them.
P.S. Wingman 310m shot = 1-1.1 sec, and 750m - full 3 seconds... (longbow ~2,2s, TT - ~1,1s; L-STAR somewhere between 1.5-1.8s (I didn't have the patience to get more hits on the 750m target to get more accurate measurements)).
P.P.S. I looked at that thread and if travel time actually varies between shots on the same weapon... Well that would explain a lot of hit inconsistencies at long range... I don't get how that could be a thing though. Some extreme rounding errors in calculations?
- DoYaSeeMe
  6 years ago
  @Biochemikas Hmm, tried a server with a 330ms ping yesterday. In training, the damage number seemed to appear with a noticeable delay. Maybe confirmations come from the server, even in training mode...