Background
In Enlisted, guns have dispersion; think of a cone attached to the end of the barrel (tho it actually comes from closer to the middle in game) and all bullets fired have a chance to go anywhere within that cone (per Euthy’s sheet the bullets have a preference towards the middle). This means that guns with lower dispersion (such as bolt actions) are considered more accurate, while those with higher dispersion (such as LMGs) are less accurate as they have more variance in where shots land.
The size of the dispersion cone is impacted by multiple factors. First is the base dispersion value which sets the size of the cone when a soldier is stationary. Below I have listed the average base dispersion for different classes of weapon (excluding their sniper variants):
- Bolt Action: 0.10
- Semi-auto: 0.20
- SMG: 0.66
- AR: 0.44
- LMG: 0.34
The cone can then be increased to a fixed amount by movement actions (“movement dispersion modifier”), and the amount differs depending on if you are ADS or have the gun at your hip (note: firing the gun does not increase dispersion). For all guns, the dispersion cone is smaller when ADS than when running at the hip (in fact the movement dispersion modifier is 0 when ADS for all guns except LMGs and AT rifles).
When a player stops moving or aims, there is an additional modifier that determines how long it takes for the increased dispersion cone to revert back to it’s baseline state. In the code this is referred to as the gun_deviation_extraDeviationTau. This is where the issue lies.
The Issue
As seen above, semi-auto rifles generally have statistically good base dispersion values; however, a common complaint has been that semi-autos have poor dispersion. The reason for this lies with the aforementioned gun_deviation_extraDeviationTau (“extra deviation”). Semi-autos have an unusually high extra deviation value, so when a player is running and spots and enemy and quickly aims and shoots, they have a similar dispersion cone as if they were hipfiring on the run (note: all weapons have a base time to revert of 0.1s in addition to their specific extra devisation). Below are the average extra deviation for different classes of weapon for comparison (note: the SVT-38 and Breda Carcano semi-autos have unique extra deviation and are also displayed below):
- Bolt Action: 0.15s
- Semi-auto: 0.30s
- SMG/AR/LMG: 0.20s
- SVT-38: 0.20s
- Breda Carcano: 0.15s
This means total time to reach minimal dispersion cone size is (based deviation of 0.1 + extra deviation):
- Bolt Action: 0.25s
- Semi-auto: 0.40s
- SMG/AR/LMG: 0.30s
- SVT-38: 0.30s
- Breda Carcano: 0.25s
As can be seen above, semi-autos (outside of a few specific weapons) have the longest/worst time to reduce the dispersion cone of all weapons.
50% slowed down
Suggestion
Reduce the gun_deviation_extraDeviationTau for semi-autos to bring in line with other weapons. My recommendation would be to make it the same as bolt actions at 0.15s as that is their direct competitor. Semi-autos offer the benefit of faster fire rate than bolt actions with the cost of worse dispersion and decreased damage (often requiring two shots to kill).
Shoutout to @ForlorN who helped me put this together by reviewing, assisting in testing, and creating the graphic and clips.