"Eagle Eye" S&W 500 Thread - The Armed Zone mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Just so we're clear, I doubt this is a TAZ issue. I'm fairly certain this is an engine issue and that there's nothing that can be done, but we'll see.

So in my latest run in with a Duty group, I found the titan of sidearms on one of them - the S&W .500 Magnum. And since one of the other bodies had a Handgun Repair Kit, I figured it was truly meant to be. It's a fun thing, but hardly easy to use. Its like every shot is a donkey kick to the face.

Anyways, I found out completely by mistake that it can also take a SUSAT, since the description gives no indication of this. I've been carrying around my Mera, so I immediately slapped it on and had myself a little mid-range sniper cannon. Despite not being too great against armor, its damage is enough to knock down heavy dudes in a few shots usually.

The issue became apparent after a huge firefight at the Waste Processing Plant in Zaton, when I took the scope off to enter the building and clear out any remaining Monolith holdouts. What I got was SUPER zoom. After a couple of reloaded saves, it quickly became apparent that the zoom was amplified as a result of the scope. I don't know whether this is the case with other SUSATs besides the Mera. I'll spawn a normal SUSAT to test.

Confirmed: Normal x4 SUSAT does not produce this issue. Neither will the other x1.6 SUSATs, I assume. Seems to exclusively be Mera.

That's not such a big surprise - Mera's always been a buggy piece of $#!t, but that stands true for any attachable scope with adjustable magnification in CoP if mods add more. To see what I mean, just reload any save and aim down a gun with the Mera already attached TO SEE FOREVER. If you're really unlucky and don't act fast enough, it'll turn turn everything yellow and CTD or when things stop warping, you'll find that you can't turn with your mouse until you reload your save. The Mera can be brought back under control by quickly adjusting the zoom even just a bit during that initial aimsighting, but the issue will always come back every time the game/save is reloaded.

I see in the Spawn Dialog under TAZ attachments that there's a "Handgun scope", codename "wpn_addon_scope_swm". I take it that this is the true intended scope, but since it's not compatible with the gun, it must be unfinished. Was leaving the .500 SUSAT compatible a fluke?

To illustrate, here's a freshly reloaded save with the S&W's default zoom. There's barely any at all, as intended.

Now, since the Mera is something like x2-x5 adjustable zoom, it produces a range of results when sight-adjusted and then taken down. Here's the result when the Mera is adjusted to minimal zoom, then taken off, and then ironsighting the Magnum again.

Nothing compares, however, to the same situation, except at max magnification:

While wierd and sorta useful, its not quite as good as you think - at this point the center dot crosshair is actually somewhere in the middle of that orange tab, so the gun obscures where it would be and aims a little high. It wasn't meant for long ranges anyways. It's only semi-accurate at that point, and you'll really need to lead your shots.

I feel a bit wierd reporting on this, as it seems apparent that an entirely different scope with a fixed zoom is destined for this at some point, and the Mera will then not likely even be usable on it. Still, thought it was a curious issue that I'm only too glad I could illustrate.

I just tested this and found it works the same on other weapons too, when you zoom in and then dismount the sight the increased zoom stays. Must be engine bug then, will probably have to remove it from game or edit it in such way as to take away the variable zoom thing (it's not a real sight so shouldn't be in game anyway)

At this point, perhaps I don't need the Mera as much as I'd initially thought. There's not so many weapons I can put it on anyways, and I think most people would agree that an ACOG would look better on them. Now, if only those Elcans were standalone attachable scopes...

Scopes have always being a piece of crap in STALKER, this tough me to always detach everything and even unload weapons when I'm stashing them, and I never use weird scopes except for 4x and 1.6x, hell I even don't use these that often, I always use iron sights.

Only SWM19 and Taurus 44 take the SWM scope you found, it works fine ingame, even some NPCs have it attached to the said revolvers.