Immersive bullet wounds

[Arkay_The_Arcane]

I was playing some more Rimworld, and started thinking about bullet wounds... Why exactly do the bullets always seem to dissapear in some way? Either they fully penetrate, and you just don't see the second bullet wound, or they stay embedded, and just dissapear, or have no lasting effect, and are remove during surgery. Surgery isn't really a viable option, because your body isn't going to push out the shrapnel on it's own. So, why not add a small feature that makes combat more immersive?

When someone is hit by a projectile, this bullet might do one of three things: The bullet will graze the victim, leaving only a light, easy to treat wound with little chance of infection, go straight through the target, causing, for example, two bullet holes, but leaving little to no shrapnel, or stay embedded in the target, maybe even splitting into shards.

If there is shrapnel inside of a body part, there will be a large chance of infection, as well as causing pain, the intensity depending on the size of the shrapnel. Shrapnel CAN be left inside of a body part, assuming you don't want to risk a medical mishap (and somehow slit the patient's throat despite him operating on his foot), although this comes with a side effect: If it's left in for a long period of time, one can catch heavy metal poisoning.

The shrapnel will be out of one of a few materials, each one causing different effects, such as lead shrapnel causing pain, general irritability, among others, while iron shrapnel causes vomiting, the heart weakens, so on, so on (Since we don't know what elements plasteel is made up of, it could really cause anything). Like any disease, they will get worse over time, but these diseases are not cured by the immune system. The only way to stop them is to remove the shrapnel, at which point the disease will stop increasing, and will slowly decrease. Keep in mind it would be less like an infection and more like the flu, in that it affects the whole body, increasing faster if there are more pieces of shrapnel from the same metal.

Back to bullet penetration, some guns are more powerful than others. Handguns, for example, are more likely to leave shrapnel behind than a sniper rifle. (Basically, since max range probably means the power of the gun, the penetration could be entirely dependant on this.) Some guns also use different munition that is more likely to split. This could be used to create guns that are more likely to weaken an opponent over-time due to leaving lots of shrapnel. Grazing shots are dependant on the accuracy of the gun and the skill of the shooter, and is basically just something inbetween missing and hitting, doing damage, but only a little.

[SpaceDorf]

I see a sudden rise of the shotgun with this system

[MajorFordson]

In general I find the injury system very immersion-breaking when it comes to bullet wounds. A single wound should be enough to bleed out almost ant creature quite shortly, yet you have creatures walking around with a few just fine.

[SpaceDorf]

In general I find the injury system very immersion-breaking when it comes to bullet wounds. A single wound should be enough to bleed out almost ant creature quite shortly, yet you have creatures walking around with a few just fine.

Thats one of the points where gameplay has to trump realism, because you would lose pawns left and right to every firefight.

Also the human body does not bleed out that easy. That is one of the Arguments of the first post.
Grazes are nothing more than shallow cuts.
A bullet stuck in muscles even prevents excessive bleeding.

Shrapnel and passing bullets can cause the most damage and bleeding...
So different damage types for bullets could change this in the right direction

[Bozobub]

Actually, if of the same type of ammo, a bullet that *stops* in the victim's body does the most damage.  This is because stopping means that the bullet has successfully transferred ALL of its kinetic energy, rather then only some, as is the case for a penetrating shot.

In fact, this is the exact reason for "dum-dum" and other expanding rounds =).  They do huge amounts of damage to soft tissue, plus they are significantly better for stopping a target in its tracks from sheer force than "ball" (normal metal-jacketed) ammo.  They are, however, much worse vs armor of any sort and generally have slightly lower range, due to worse aerodynamics.

[Lemonater47]

To be completely immersive it would almost have to be RNG. Some people go down easy while other people have been known to have survived multiple gunshot wounds. And I mean 10+ shots to the torso with an intermediate round. All depends on where it hits.

Through the brain = dead instantly. Your skull generally isn't very good at stopping bullets and even a helmet does a rather poor job.
Through the heart you are dead in seconds.
Through the lungs you can survive quite a while provided you have medical attention.
Through the liver means you are pretty screwed unless you can somehow get a new liver.
Through the stomach is survivable if you have immediate surgery.


There is another phenomenon called hydrostatic shock. Your blood when compressed by the force of a round hitting the body will damage blood vessels and expand in other areas of the body rapidly. Since your blood vessels cannot hold blood when it goes to very high pressures. If this happens in the brain that can kill you even if you had a through and through round go through your chest. Burst vessels can also occur in other parts of the body when this happens.

Not to mention there are numerous important blood vessels that if severed can cause death very quickly. Some run run through the torso and even through your limbs.


Personally I don't think it's a good idea for this game. You'd simply lose pawns very quickly. Though my main concern is actually with the friendly fire. With any realism mod half my casualties are due to friendly fire using that mod. Since nobody actually gives a shit who's in front of them. So if they did make guns far more lethal then they would have to do something about the FF.

[kixiye]

I like your idea of guns having their own damage type. At the very least they should have an entry and exit wound or a chance for a bullet to stop inside the body.  It could have a bigger chance to go straight through for rifle type weapons as they fire very fast, small caliber bullets and a bigger chance of them staying inside when using pistol caliber weapons that fire slower bullets. Bows and spears could work the same way, that arrows needed to be removed for the wound to be properly tended.
The same could be applied to different kinds of cover, a piece of cover with a certain % of resistance to damage could stop a bullet (stone and steel structures)  and if the damage resistance is lower then a bullet would have a chance of passing through and doing less (possibly more) damage if it hits someone on the other side.
Of course a full ballistic model is a bit far off from Rimworld, but I'm sure some middle ground could be reached to distance firearms from both melee and arrows/spears.

I had a modded folder of a17 where I had added different Damagedefs and Hediffs for rifle and pistol bullets, where rifle bullets would have an increased pain and bleeding rate to simulate shock from being hit, and a larger cavity than pistols, and I liked how it played out compared to the original data.
I had also given grenades their own damagedefs and added resistance to it and bullets to buildings as a hand grenade is more likely to clear out a house rather than breaking down it's walls. There are other sorts of explosives used for that.
I can't find the folder at the moment though, I may have deleted it I am afraid.