Assault Rifle / Carbine Silencers Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Greetings fellow Stalkers, I have the following question with regards to silencers:

What practical purpose do they serve for assault rifles / carbines (i.e. what are the positives and what are the drawbacks)? Do they increase accuracy, decrease recoil, decrease damage, etc.? It seems as though "medium" sound suppression may not be worth the potential drawbacks (if any, please explain) of using a silencer on an assault rifle. I understand the practical use on a pistol, as the pistol silencers typically have "high" sound suppression; however, I am struggling with understanding the point of a silencer on an assault rifle. If there are no inherent drawbacks / only positives, then I guess using a silencer is a no-brainer (despite muffling the awesome sounds from some assault rifles).

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Well, using assault rifles with silencers is generally advised only when you're trying to ambush somebody during the night, preferably from a bush. The reason for that is most ammo types in Misery aren't suited for silencers, and thus the sound reduction is small.

Though, there's one ammo type that synergises greatly with silencers and that is 9x39, which is a subsonic type of round, and weapons which use it include Groza, AS VAL, VSS Vintorez, 9A-91 (TAZ), and some more.

These are generally perfect stealth weapons, and enemies quite rarely know where am I shooting from at them, panically looking for some sort of cover, but if you're expecting typical assault rifle operating non-subsonic round to be perfect stealth weapon, you're going to be disappointed.

Pistols have relatively small calibers that are suitable with silencers, thus they've got better application as suppressed assassin's tools.

Understood; however, I am more concerned with whether silencers actually add any benefit other than sound suppression (e.g., accuracy) and / or have any drawbacks (e.g., range reduction, damage reduction, accuracy reduction). If they only slightly suppress sound without adding any drawbacks, then there is no point to not use them.

I believe that suppressors actually decrease recoil, while lowering all other stats a little.

If proper values from Stalker wiki also apply to weapons in Misery, then it should go more or less like this:

• 20% Damage Reduction
• 20% Bullet Velocity Reduction
• 20% Spread Increase
• 20% Less Recoil

Damage shouldn't be much of a concern, since well-placed headshot still kills anything. Accuracy is on worse side, and so is spread. But other than than, for the surprise element suppressors give, trade is worth it, unless you like direct combat.

Examine the specs in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stalker Call of Pripyat\gamedata\configs\weapons\addon_silencers.ltx with notepad++ and you can see all the effects. Everything has a trade off. You give up some power for the element of surprise and a little more time to relocate before you are found and eliminated.

Great, thanks Jasper.

Well I thought about it logically and as you are using the same rounds, and most of the negative effects of silencers are due to using subsonic ammo, I might as well use one. But since it actually does reduce damage and accuracy by 20% I may reconsider. Playing as recon though, I do find it is worth sacrificing power for stealth, especially as I typically aim for the head which usually one hit kills anyway.

Personally I would like subsonic ammo to be introduced. Using it with a carbine/AR with a silencer will get the full effect of the silencer, but cause the negatives aforementioned. Using standard ammo reduce the silencing effect (in reality this is mostly the sonic crack of the bullet, the silencer takes care of the muzzle blast) but means you keep your damage and accuracy. Effectively, subsonic ammo people would barely hear your shots if at all. With standard ammo, people will be well aware you are shooting, but it will be much harder to locate where from by the sound.

I also think a silenced assault rifle sounds bad ass, and I feel properly tooled up using it with a scope and GL as well, a versatile weapon for any occasion. I have a +/- 40% condition Groza I might try and fix up to replace my AKS-74U.

It is not 20%, you can't believe a fraction of what you read on the internet

I did a bit of research and it looks like suppressors (not limited to integral - i.e. including bolt-on ones) typically have no negative impact (and may actually) improve accuracy and decrease recoil, so long as they are attached properly. There is an exception for carbines that undergo continual automatic rapid fire, as firing with a very hot suppressor will have an impact on accuracy. Suppressors may alter the handling (i.e. weight and balance) of the weapon, but as long as they are of high-quality construction, suppressors should not negatively impact the action and characteristics of a firearm. So long as I am not way out in left field, this may be something to consider for future releases. Please see the link below for one of my sources.

Gundigest.com

The effect used to be more dramatic on earlier games. It's minimal now AFAIK. You can very easily edit your own weapon configs and see where there is a different hit_power listed for silenced operation. You can make them match if they do not already

jasper34 wrote:

It is not 20%, you can't believe a fraction of what you read on the internet

Haha, well I just go with how it feels to be honest. I may edit my configs so that suppressors have no negative effects as it is the ammo used that causes loss of velocity and impact.

TBH I've just had a hell of a time trying to do the chimera hunt (non wounded). I didn't feel like putting my gun away while I was near Jack's checkpoint seeing as I was tracking a dangerous monster, then this caused them to see me as a threat and start shooting at me. I'm pretty sure there was another faction in the area as well as NPCs seemed to be shooting at each other. Jack's bandit's made swiss cheese of the chimera I was meant to hunt, which was disappointing, and I didn't feel like hanging around to find the trophy with them shooting at me. But the chimera is dead, I don't really care about the bandits to be honest.

I have been less appeasive (if thats a word) to various factions this time (didnt give pda to owl) and freedom and the bandits seem to have a random policy on me, one day they will walk right up to me, next it is shoot to kill. I kind of like this, it makes the whole situation feel tense and you don't know who you can trust, but when the bullets fly, hunker down or run like hell. At least I know Duty have got my back. This whole mess seemed to cause a few CTDs with overloads of CPU or whatever. Misery is pretty much the only game I will put up with this amount of CTDs for, cos its so fun. I just think of a CTD as a random anomaly killed you and you have to start over lol.

I see now the direction I would have liked Misery to take, would probably just consume an insane amount of computer resources. This whole organised chaos thing is what does it for me, but it seems to fry x-ray engine too. I wonder if my CTDs was just from too much going on at one time.

What were your system specs again? CTD's should be few and far between with an average system. The mod is very stable.

8GB RAM, Windows 10, i5 4690 4x @ 3.5ghz, GTX970. I'm pretty sure its the RAM that is the problem, it's a very high spec not sure exactly but 8GB might be a little low with windows 10, I like to let things get a little hairy anyway with AI settings, I like to have the random chaos even if it does cause the odd CTD. IIRC Yanov always used to get a little too much going on in older versions of misery and caused this problem.

Edited by: neilbreach240

If you are running too high a switch_distance in Jupiter which has double the alife volume, it will cause more CTD's. Some adjustments have been made for 2.2 to prevent some of them. 8GB is fine, anything less can cause problems more frequently. Even with 32GB, before the adjustments for 2.2 there would be increased CTD's at excessive switch_distances. Some pools of resources (internal to the engine) would be exhausted.

Jasper, after looking at the file you identified above, if I wanted to neutralize the negatives of the silencer, would I just change all the associated multipliers to 1 as opposed to, for example, 0.87?

No, make them exactly the same as the regular specs usually higher up on the file.

jasper34 wrote:

If you are running too high a switch_distance in Jupiter which has double the alife volume, it will cause more CTD's. Some adjustments have been made for 2.2 to prevent some of them. 8GB is fine, anything less can cause problems more frequently. Even with 32GB, before the adjustments for 2.2 there would be increased CTD's at excessive switch_distances. Some pools of resources (internal to the engine) would be exhausted.

AFAIK I am running all default switch distances, etc. My CTDs seem much less random now, mostly occurring around traveling between areas. All in all, the game seems to have settled down and become fairly stable now.

Good to hear