Momentum has more relevance than kinetic energy to the physics involved in CC's bullets, I say. The initial momentum of a bullet is the momentum with which the firearm operator is pushed back by recoil, which is directly relevant to the speed they're pushed back. Some of that momentum is lost due to air resistance, but then when the bullet impacts the target, some or all of that momentum is transferred to the target, depending on whether the bullet bounces off, embeds itself, or penetrates through. And that directly effects how much getting hit pushes the target back. These aren't usually very important in gameplay or aesthetic effects in the context of realistically portrayed small arms weapons, but they are easily distinguishable, real, and mathematically simple enough to concern one's self with. If second-week American Midwest students in a high school physics class can drudge through it first thing in the morning, it can't be too hard.

In reality, a bullet's kinetic energy has much bearing, but this is mostly relevant to terminal ballistics: penetration, tendency to fragment, yaw, deform, temporary/permanent wound cavities, etc, it's important to wounding. However, CC's engine doesn't really give much bearing to it, because it uses simplified methods for determining wounding, chiefly, momentum * sharpness = penetration. Which I find reasonable, (the problem I expressed about the wounding is the end-effect implementation of that penetration equation) it's just a game and doesn't need to be overly complicated in attempt to achieve perfect realism, it only needs to try to be fun and maybe have a general baseline of realism.

So overall I'd say striving for realistic momentum is more reasonable than striving for realistic kinetic energy for bullets in CC.

I wasn't really making any arguments for kinetic energy vs momentum. I was just trying to figure out what the CC engine concerns itself with.

And I was just discussing what CC's engine concerns itself with, respectively, although I can see how the wording may have come off as argumentative.

Ignoring the discussion above me, I'd just like to say:

I've long since moved past expecting CC variables to have any relevance to "real life" values, though there's certainly a line to be drawn (seriously, the coalition rocket launcher weighs something like 70 kilograms) but mostly what I'd like with CC's content is consistency. I don't, honestly, care if the values are unrealistic, because regardless of everything else in CC, the scale is FAR too small for velocities to be anywhere near realistic, which skews absolutely everything else all to hell. (by scale I mean the actual engagement range; the average map is 100-150 meters long from end to end, which is absolutely silly when an M16 round can travel easily 800 meters.)

Basically, just keep actual bullets about the same basic level. Tweak mass, sharpness, velocity within a practical range, without going absolutely overboard. At least as a baseline for first-party content. And I realize that's in the works, Lizard, so A++ on that.

I think once you have one variable that is consistent throughout all the in game items everything else falls into place nicely and mass and velocity are probably he easiest things to et consistent and realistic. (once you have the masses and velocities correct the only things that can change are things like sharpness, air resistance, spread etc.)

Also Darlos using the formula m*10, v/10 gives the same momentum and force, I don't know why you'd be multiplying velocity by itself (your formula is F=M*v*v which is not correct)... I'm pretty sure you know F=M*a but I think you must have messed up your conversion between acceleration and velocity, a= m/s/s, v= m/s, a= v/s, so the formula for force using velocity is F=M*(v/s).

Yeah okay you're right, it'd just be m*v anyway, since we're basically assuming that the bullet is instantly accelerating from 0 to its velocity. So the velocity and the acceleration would have the same value.

So disregard my bad physics, people.

I wanted to drag this topic out of its grave in order to ask the devs if they have coincided on having a somewhat standardized ammunition weight/sharpness.

Will the coalition/ronin/browncoat bullets remain to be the ammo of the future?