Aside from gun play, we’ve also taken a close look at damage and ballistics for Gallipoli. We’ve taken a more granular approach, which makes firing weapons feel more realistic, as well as different from each other. As an added benefit, having more numbers to tweak will also help us with balancing!
If you missed our reasoning and gun play changes, be sure to check out our previous blog.
We would like to preface this blog with a little disclaimer that everything in this blog is a balancing matter and so very much subject to change.
Note: If you can't see the images, try the blog on Reddit!
Ballistics
We’ve introduced simulated ballistics in Gallipoli! Bullets should now much more closely behave like you’d expect from the caliber and weapon they’re fired from.
Two of the included changes are bullet travel time and bullet drop. We no longer use hitscan; bullets now take a bit of time to travel over great distances and drop a bit along the way, depending on the weapon and the bullet. The effect will be quite minor in most circumstances if you use a weapon for their intended range, but you’ll really notice it if you try to snipe with a revolver.
Damage
One area we looked at is damage fall-off, the amount of damage lost when hitting a target from long range. The amount of damage fall-off depends on the weapon you’re using: damage from small arms like pistols start to drop off after 10 meters, while rifles start to be affected between 50 and 100 meters. Regardless of weapon used and damage lost over range, a headshot will always take out your target in one hit.
On that topic, the body has been split up into more parts, each with their own damage modifiers to make damage more granular. In our previous games we distinguished between the head, arms and body when it came to calculating damage, but we now make use of all the different body parts: neck, belly, pelvis, upper limbs, lower limbs, hands and feet. Each of these has its own damage multiplier based on how much it sucks to get shot there.
Penetration
Bullet penetration also got some attention! Materials now more accurately affect bullets passing through. Fabrics have little effect, wooden poles a lot more! The harder the material, the more stopping power is lost once the bullet comes out the other end – if any stopping power remains.
It’s generally not recommended to use your squad as a human shield.
How it’s calculated
Damage, bullet travel time, bullet drop and penetration are all calculated based on the muzzle velocity of the weapon used, bullet weight, bullet diameter and the shape of the bullet nose.
On an individual level, every weapon does have unique characteristics that reflect what they were like in real life. Now, we don’t expect you to learn the ins and outs of every single weapon, so you’ll be able to compare the stats in-game!
What it all means
These changes both really make firing weapons feel more realistic, but also makes sure weapons aren’t too effective outside of their intended role. Semi-automatic pistols should feel great at close range, but shouldn’t be effective at longer ranges as well. Scoped rifles should be best suited at long range, but hitting your target should still be a fair challenge!
While everything we mentioned here may sound complicated, it all feels natural in practice. Firing and aiming weapons is more realistic, but there’s no need to whip out a calculator to hit a distant shot with a rifle. Gallipoli is not a full-on simulator, but closer to a ‘milsim-lite’ than our previous games!
Thanks for reading! This blog was a bit more technical, but we hope you found it interesting. More blogs are coming your way, so be sure to wishlist and follow Gallipoli on Steam to get everything right in your library.