Why is full auto so prominent in Sandstorm?

Insurgency Source had a good balance between the two fire modes, although semi auto always seemed to be preferable between players. I would say that out of 10 players, 4 used full auto. But now in Sandstorm it seems that the entire lobby uses full auto, besides snipers.
I still think semi auto is underpowered, I just dont know why. Hit reg seems fine, but I just cant get good performance using semi auto rifles compared to when I use full auto.
Anyone has any idea why?

last edited by A Former User

@tuliottr Due to easily manageable recoil in full auto.

The TTK is still too high which leads itself to spraying gameplay with the medium caliber 5.56 weapons.

I've been using the 7.62 g3a3, FAL and SCAR and they both seem to be equally as (in)effective when in long range firefights on either single fire or full auto, so I mostly stick to single fire with them to save ammo.

But for the 5.56 guns in long range firefights it's full auto all the way. With the increased mag sizes (30 round), lower weapon recoild and 5 mags with the chest carrier you'd need to sling as much dps as possible down range to get any kills before the enemy sonic sprints to cover.

I'm still awaiting 1 shot 1 kill with the m16a4/a2

last edited by Slazenger

yeah, maybe I am wrong. TTK still seems high.
I do miss those one shot kills with the M16.

I think the third person animation seems to contribute to this. They are still innacurate compared to the actual hitbox.
I remember placing the reticle above a player, firing and getting the kill. I thought that was lag, but I saw blood being splattered

@slazenger I think the TTK is pretty fast tbh, it takes like 2 or 3 9mm shots to the chest with HA. With 5.56, it is usually 2. So I'm not sure how that is any slower than Ins2 since that's waay faster

@io543 Did you ever use AP in Insurgency2014? For the most part everything was 1 shot 1 kill.

@slazenger You have to consider that Ins:SS does not have AP for these weapons. And yes I did obviously. Try shooting 9mm to HA without AP in Ins2 and see how many shots you require compare to Ins:SS at the current.

@io543 I believe that would be 4 shots without AP on the Makarov against heavy armor, if I'm not mistaken, so you are right on that. For the rifles the bullets to kill was always 1 to the chest in Insurgency2014 but I haven't experienced that in Sandstorm.

@slazenger yeah, youre right. I always use battle rifles and I havent got a single one shot kill at close range. Plus, it took me 3 shots of the M16A2 to kill a unarmored player at mid range. it was absurd

@slazenger There was an experiment on Youtube where someone shoots non-AP rounds to Heavy armor to non-armored with an AKM with 10 seconds interval (for partial "health regen" to occur), and it took 10 AKM rounds to the chest for heavy armor and 4 shots with light armor in INS2. Even without time intervals, I remember it was like 3 to 4 shots with AKM without AP, so I think TTK is faster in the new upcoming game.

@io543 I thought it was a given when I made my post that I meant it was 1 shot 1 kill with AP.
The TTK is not faster in Sandstorm.

@io543
akm(no ap ammo) can kill light armour mostly by max 2 shots on chest.
light armour is useless unless u wnna camp a dark corner with a suppressor.
akm has really powerful ammo in insurgency

Because (right now) full auto offers more benefits to using single fire.

  • Vertical recoil is easy to handle
  • Low horizontal recoil or pretty much no horizontal recoil with compensators
  • High TTK
  • Dodgy Hitreg

To sum it up, right now it is better to throw as much shit at the wall as possible and it is easy to do it.

@tuliottr I call bs on this, unless you hit him in the foot or any other low dmg area. Aim for at least the chest and no unarmored enemy will take 3 hits from a rifle.

last edited by Benz

Raised TTK compared to INS2 and harder to hit animations/hitboxes with increased average engagement ranges are the main reason. Lower recoil might contribute too.

Hipfire is also crazy easy right now. In INS2 it used to be rather hard to control hipfire fullauto and I mostly only used it "by accident" because I got surprised by an enemy and reacted by shooting without aiming. In INS:SS fullauto hipfire is so easy to aim that inside buildings it has become my goto attack mode. I would personally nerf that hard (and lower TTK).

@benz https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yb0wV5WA1IuSOG1jHAojG13EytLQgXuS/view?usp=sharing
Maybe it could have been a hitbox problem, but still, I am sure I at least hit 3 shots at that guy. You can see I even stop firing thinking he was going down. And he is not wearing armor, that vest he had was just a chest carrier.
Plus, I just realized that the shots were hitting the bus behind him, I'm not sure if it is lag or pass throughs

@GrotesqueShadow this looks like an example of failed animations, doesnt it?

last edited by A Former User

@tuliottr thanks for the clip! But that's 100% hitreg and not TTK. You sadly only hit him 2 times. Part is bad aim and part is def. bad hitreg.

last edited by Benz

@mefirst said in Why is full auto so prominent in Sandstorm?:

Because (right now) full auto offers more benefits to using single fire.

  • Vertical recoil is easy to handle
  • Low horizontal recoil or pretty much no horizontal recoil with compensators
  • High TTK
  • Dodgy Hitreg

To sum it up, right now it is better to throw as much shit at the wall as possible and it is easy to do it.

To be fair to NWI, dealing with recoil has always been a case of pulling down on the mouse since ins 2014. With the exception of the MP40 pretty much any gun has minimal horizontal recoil as well. Unsure why the compensator exists at this point as I don't feel a difference using it vs. not using it.

With the hit registration tweak I'm getting consistent kills with the M16's on burst fire in co op, and managing better in pvp using the M16 twins as well. As an aside, going to experiment more in regard to this.

@TulioTTR Is it possible for you to make a slowmo version? Would help in figuring out if this is hit registration or not.

@lambda-unit said in Why is full auto so prominent in Sandstorm?:

@TulioTTR Is it possible for you to make a slowmo version? Would help in figuring out if this is hit registration or not.

If I click on the link it shows in a youtube style player where you can click on the cogwheel with the "hd" logo on it and set it to 0.25 speed. Looks to me like a mix of misses, hitreg issues, hitboxes not reflecting the model well and one shot going to the window frame in the foreground because its collision mesh was slightly bigger than the visual mesh.

The LODs in the game look like they are auto-generated by simpligon and while that saves tremendous amounts of time and money, some of the results are plain fucked. Like the MG crosshair of the technical is unusable for me right now. If they use autogenerated low level LODs for collision mesh geometry, they might have all kinds of funky hitboxes in the environment

@grotesqueshadow take a look at the last shot, the one that finally killed him: my reticle wasnt even on the target. (I was alone at that alley and I checcked if I got the kill once I died) My ping was around 180, I know thats pretty high, but not high enough to lag that much. That seems like hitbox issue