All the way back to the OP:

I am seeing more damage on my .50 than any .44 I have now, so this must be an offset introduced by perks. My guess is, it simply comes down to the damage increase introduced by the fully-upgraded mods plus the multiplier added by gunslinger. It's probably just one of the later mods that add some real kick to the .44 base damage to create that big "Magnum" punch.

In real life, however, a .50 caliber round is going to do...quite a bit more damage if it hits something than a .44. A .44 will leave a pretty big hole in a target. A .50 cal will tend to separate large portions of a target from the rest of it. The .50 should always be massively more powerful. As this is a game, however, it might be pretty tricky to either:

1.) tone down the .44 while also ensuring its damage is still significantly better than .38 and 10mm ammo

or

2.) raise the .50 cal's damage to the right offset without letting players one-shot a Deathclaw at level 3.

No, hydraulic shock, and anything else will not kill you when it hits you "anywhere". There's only one thing that kills and that's central nervous system shutting down. You can kill directly only when you hit certain parts of the brain or upper spine. Anything else kills only indirectly. When you hit heart, you don't die because your heart is gone, but because your heart ceased to pump blood in to your brain and your brain was thus deprived of oxygen. When you cut arteries above heart, pressure in your blood circulation system falls to zero, blood stops circulating and you die. These are only places on human body which when hit cause instant death. And it does not matter with what and how much energy you hit them.

You can turn any other part of human body in to goo and he will still live. For some time. Most other wounds kill by bleeding off. Which depending on location can happen very fast (in matter of seconds). Blood delivers oxygen in to your brain. When you bleed off, brain is deprived of oxygen. You die. When you damage lungs enough to cause them to stop functioning, you again deprive brain of oxigen.

Living body is not system composed of hit points. These comparisons with real world are simply off. Only sense this sort of discussion can make is in terms of game balance.

No. First of all in game, .50 cal actually does quit a bit more damage then .44. OP is comparing .50 to MODIFIED .44. In real life, size of the wound (closest thing to our "damage") is not determined just by bullet energy (speed and weight). It is also determined by shape of the bullet, it's material properties like ability to change shape under impact or ability to shatter. Ability to thumb upon impact also have effect on size of the wound.

.50 cal round was designed as a anti aircraft round. It's hard capped, with pointed tip and designed for maximum penetration. Bullets with such properties however actually does less wounding damage, not more. In real life penetration ability and wounding ability are contrary to each other. Soft capped bullets tend to deform, expand or even fragment upon hit which cause more damage to living tissue. Flat tipped or cavity tipped bullets also dramatically increase size of the wound.

.44 is typically soft capped and flat nosed, some even hollow point, unlike .50 which is designed for maximum penetration, this bullet is designed for maximum wounding effect. Now add to that that OP is comparing modified .44 (mod which increases damage). In real world that could equal either overloaded cartridge, heavier bullet, some modification to bullet nose to cause it to expand upon impact or their combination. For example RL .44 "buffalo" round is heavier, faster and have about double of the energy when compared to standard .44 round.

.50 cal might be more "powerful" meaning it have more energy, but that does not mean it does more damage (size of the wound).

And now some facts:

Myth 1: The .50 will rip skin off with a near miss.


Fact: The only way a bullet will ever hurt you is by hitting you. The lack of destructive shockwave is clearly evident when shooting paper targets. The holes in the paper are caliber sized and no additional damage to the target is seen.
http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:-VhkUe_PlUjmjM:http...mg/asrul50st100a.JPG

(note clean target holes)"

If shockwave effect existed for the .50 it should exist for all other bullets traveling at the same speed. Note that 30-06 and .50 BMG have similar muzzle velocities difference in bullet diameter is less than .2".

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:XwScgrafjAj4EM:http...0408%2520Cheytac.JPG

Myth 2: .50 can blow people apart.


Fact: Although the .50 can cause horrific wounds it can not blow a grown man in half.


Here is picture of the wound channel in gelatin for a .50 BMG .750gr A-Max.
http://www.brassfetcher.com/images/50blka.jpg


Note maximum diameter of temporary cavity is ~7.5" occurring at a depth of 8". This occurs as the bullet begins to yaw.


Here is a picture of various .308 loads using the Hornady A-Max bullets.

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/docgkr/myhomepage/308_TAP_comparison.jpg


Note that temporary cavity diameter is nearly identical, but occurring at a much shallower depth. The .308 A-Max bullets expand and fragment.


Note that the permanent cavity created by the .50 is fairly small early in the wound track. If the .50 passes through a limb without yawing or hitting bone the effect should be similar to a 1/2" icepick wound. However if the round strikes the torso of a thick chested individual it may begin to yaw within the body and produce a large temporary cavity near the end of the wound track. This would result in a massive exit wound and is likely the basis for the myth of people being blown in half.

From: http://citadelofmyths.freeforums.net/thread/94/50-bmg-reality-myth

To test out the damages of each weapon I suggest to build a shooting range in your settlements then put up several Salisbury Steaks as targets, then check the dents in the Steaks to see which is more powerful

And here is .50 fired from Barret rifle against small cube of ballistic gelatin on video. Look at how that .50 ripped that gelatin apart, look how sheer hydrostatic shock blew it in to bits!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J9hCDr21mo

Except it did not. There goes you fantasies about .50 blowing men apart ripping their limbs off. NOT!

The reality is, that unless .50 starts twisting inside the body, it does VERY LITTLE damage. Problem with high powered, hard tipped and pointed bullets like .50 bmg is that they don't twist easily in depths typical for normal human tissue, precisely because they have too much energy. Human chest is about 25-30cm from the front and about 40cm from the side. And that's thickest part of human body.

And that's ladies and gentleman reason why military does not use .50 as a antipersonnel bullet. It svcks in that role.

Game, not sim.

Perks provide viable paths for those who prefer a particular type of weapon, otherwise player choice and weapon alternatives would become irrelevant.

Let me focus things for us just a bit. First, waaay back when in this thread, I stated that the OP had the notion that the 50 cal would do more damage because of the common perception by many people that the 50 does more damage. That led him to believe that the .44 was overpowered.

Next, the question of the damage is a bit elusive due to the nature of the beast so to speak. Fire a .44 at a brick wall, and the wall will take some damage. Fire a .50 at the same wall, and the wall will take damage, and the guy hiding behind the wall will be killed. that is because of the penetration provided. So, from the wall's point of view the .44 and the .50 both do some damage. From the guy hiding behind the wall's point of view, the .44 did no damage, while the .50 was lethal. Unfortunately, the game won't let us fire a bullet through a wall, so in-game it ends up moot.

Last, I don't think that video showed what you though it did (or did not). First, I have no idea of "hydrostatic shock", but... note that the video demonstrated that the bullet began to do extreme damage after about 18 inches of gel, and it looked to me that after that 18 inches, a body part might well have been removed. Here's the thing about gel. It replicates the effects of a bullet on muscle tissue. Pay attention here... It does NOT reflect the effects of a bullet striking skin or bone, or the effects of said bullet after striking skin or bone.

So, if the bullet enters the body after striking skin, the trajectory and effects will be altered from the effects of striking gel. Then after striking bone, the bullet will begin to tumble far faster than if passing through gelatin. That means the effects you saw on that second block of gelatin will begin immediately as the bullet passes through bone. I don't know but I'm pretty certain that could cause the limb to become separated. What are the odds of a bullet entering a human body striking a bone? Again, I don't know, but I'd guess pretty good.

What I'm saying is that the video didn't prove much regarding combat conditions. Especially if you consider the enmy is probably not standing out there naked so you can easily hit his muscle tissue. That is, imagin a super mutant standing out in front of you at a fair range. He might be mostly naked, but more often he is wearing some type of armor, right? So what happens when that .50 cal hits the armor, then the tissue, then the bone, then perhaps more bone, more soft tissue then the inside of the armor on the supermutant's back?

I think too that a Deathclaw's hide has been compared to armor, and most Raiders wear armor of some sort... and don't even get me started on whether or not a mirelurk Queen is an armored opponent! What effect is all that armor going to have on that .50 cal bullet, and how would that reflect in terms of damage?

Now, consider that you are the developer, setting statistics for various in-game weapons. Where do you begin to determine damage against all types of targets? How do you decide the ultimate damage for a given round? Is it going to be the same against a mirelurk Queen as against a raider in metal or combat armor? Well, to some extent the armor rating given by the game will modify the damage, but still, how do you determine the base amount of damage between a .44 and a .50 against the same armored opponent? Do you use weight of the bullet, velocity, energy, penetration, or do you simply multiply everything by the square root of negative one and write the number in?

Finally, there was something that inspired curiosity in me in that video. That was the flash of light inside the gel when the bullet first hit. The narrator explained that this is a result of gases formed in liquid as the high velocity round passed through giving off heat and light. I wonder if that has any effect on wounds inside a body...

Yes, and that notion was wrong at several levels. That's why we are discussion it. First of all he was not comparing .50 to .44. He was comparing .50 to modified .44. Mod which in some abstract way adds damage to .44.

Second of all, "common perception" is not argument. There used to be common perception that Earth is flat and Sun turns around Earth. Common perceptions are often wrong.

Penetration is in game terms cowered by separate value called "damage resistance" and "armor piercing" ability. Environmental protection is not modeled in game at all, so your brick wall example is completely irrelevant. Brick walls in Fallout stop everything from pistol round to canon fire without exception.

Which human body part have thickens of 18 inches? 18 inches is about maximum thickens of chest of very well build man. There is reason why those ballistic gelatin blocks are 18 inches long.

Yes you can gain shots which go through more then 18inches of human tissue if you shoot at the angles close to be parallel to human spine. But that's also the most improbable angle you can shoot at a man.

On the other hand most hits are going to penetrate much less then 18 inches of a tissue and in that case .50 is going to do minimal damage. It will shoot clear through leaving hole little bit more hen 0.5 inch in diameter. About 1.5-2 cm.

What you also fail to notice is that once .50 finally starts tumbling, which is past those 18inches, it doesn't do any more damage then most other rounds. That second 18 inch block did not explode in to little bits, did it?. Maximum diameter of it's wound is at no point larger then that of much smaller .308. That's because at that point .50 lost lot of it's speed and therefore energy.

That's true and I am aware of that. But in case of lack of video of impact and picture of wound cavity at the real body, that's the closest thing you can have in terms of realism. If you can provide pictures or videos of .50 impacts on real bodies and their results, you are welcome. So far however neither you nor any other poster, including those claiming that .50 sewers limbs, cuts bodies in half and cause bleeding just by passing around provided exactly nothing to back their claims.

I at last provided video of what .50 does to ballistic gel, which is specially designed material to simulate body tissue. And you know what, it does not show crazy damage some posters claim here in their fantasies. I hope you can agree with me, that if that .50 failed to tear apart those gel bricks (even the second one once it started to spin and shattered in to bits), it's unlikely it will cut bodies in half or cause internal bleeding just by passing by and other nonsense.

Those are lot of ifs and considers and so on. Please go on and show me effects of what .50 does to the bone, to the skin and so on. Nobody so far provided a single shred of evidence about .50 mythical power except campfire fairy-tale about soldier bleeding to the death after bullet flew close to him. Utter and complete nonsense.

Btw, no, shattering of bone can not tear limb apart, for that you would need also to cut muscle around it. Which .50 can't. Not even under best condition because bone is always in the middle of the muscle so there will always be muscle in the front of the bone, which .50 passed through without doing much damage.

As for armor protection, skin bone and their effect on .50, yes it can slow bullet down and cause it to spin or shatter earlier then 18 inches deep. However what you forgot to take in mind is that it will at the same time slow that bullet down depriving it of it's energy. At which point .50 will not do any more damage then less powerful cartridges do.

There is no direct relation between energy of bullett (determined by it's weight and speed) and size of wounds. That was disproved many times by clinical tests. Whole energy deposit theory is a myth. That's not to say there is no relation, there is, but only in accordance to other factors like shape of the bullet, it's material properties and properties of place it hit. And here design of .50 goes against it's wounding capabilities, because it's shaped and made of such materials which does least amounts of damage. Wheres most common .44 are exact opposite, they are designed to do maximum wounding damage. At the cost of penetration. And that's perfectly logical, .50 is designed against protected material targets while .44 is designed against unprotected living beings (both humans and animals).

And then still OP compares normal .50 to .44 which was moded for maximum damage, what ever that is in game terms.

.44 is very powerful pistol round. In fact it was designed to be used in both pistols and lever action rifles and is used to hunt the biggest game (with modified bullets) and for that reason it is considered dual purpose round (pistol and rifle). Now can .44, when modified for maximum damage (for example by overloading it's charge, using heavier bullet and modifying it's tip) do larger wounds then standard .50? I think that's not impossible. In fact it's quit probable under most conditions given .50 have about the same wounding profile like .308 just better penetration.

Uhh this isn't a sim I can't believe people are arguing about this lol. It's fallout, with radiation zombies and aliens dude.

I will have to redress what I said before -- it seems the game is actually pretty accurate. I had no idea .44's were that bloody powerful in reality, but they are.

It's possible to outfit a .50 with explosive tips, and this is what is fairly standard for anti-infantry roles. The standard round is a tapered AP round, capable of high material penetration, but not really super effective at soft-tissue injury. It can't even blow an apple in half -- it will pass right through it leaving a rather small hole. So it's role is rather moderate damage with high penetration. And they are also fairly accurate at range.

A .44 is all about stopping power. Even a rounded tip will turn an apple into chewed chunks. Use a hollow point...and you'll make juice. They can (quite literally) shred a fleshy target, and if the bullet tumbles when it hits, things get very scary. Even armored targets are going to suffer because of the incredible concussive impact of the round hitting.

On the whole, it seems the game is pretty fair about the damage the rounds cause. It also explains why I have found nearly 2000 .50 cal round, but only about 400 .44 rounds! (Haven't used either much, so it seems .44's are balanced by their rarity.) It also explains why, IMO, the .44's sound effect is the best in the game. BOOM.

/sigh

The two major reasons that the military, any military, doesn't use the .50 cal BMG as the main round for their battle rifles and assault rifles has nothing to do with how lethal the round is. The main reasons they don't use those beasts is because each one weighs over a pound and costs an arm, a leg and your first born male child (you can bypass the child if you know the name of the individual that cast the projectile, which is Rumpledforeskin). When I was in the Army, I regularly carried 300 rounds of 5.56mm ammo AND BARELY NOTICED THE ADDITIONAL WEIGHT. If I tried to do that with .50 cal, I would have been on my face and unable to move.

Look folks, we are talking about a game that is full of unreal mechanics.

Terrestrial arthropods the size of radscorpions are a physical impossibility, they simply could not survive. Something the size of a New Vegas Bark Scorpion is about as large as they could get and still be able to move.

You cannot silence things like .50 cal. or .308 cal. rifles. The projectiles have to be subsonic for a silencer to properly work.

You cannot jump off skyscraqers and hit the pavement, in something like power armor, without dying, much less do it uninjured.

In game I can carry two sniper rifles, a battle rifle, a combat shotgun, a missile launcher and a fat and deploy them with no problems. Try doing something like that in real In real life,

People don't ragdoll when they get hit in real life, they crumple. Any solid projectile that you fire from a hand held weapon that would be capable of ragdolling your target, would ragdoll you when you fired it.

The list of things in this game that are not realistic is endless. Realism is not a part of the game. Balance that is based on realism is not a part of the game.

That's correct. .44 is on the edge of what is tolerable for a pistol round. It produces such blowback and flash that it's not comfortable to fire. In rifle variant (modified and used in level action rifles) it is used to hunt large game, which puts it on par or close to full rifle rounds (like .308 or 30-06) in terms of wounding power.

You would be moving with a smile on your face and .50 cal in your pockets if top brass deemed it necessary. So no, weight is not the reason. Not on it's own. Soldiers used to haul much heavier cartridges then your 5.56 for their battle rifles without failing on their faces.

Sigh.

Well this got dull fast

Where's the Dirty Harry quotes:

8000yds? 8000!

That's like 4.5miles.

When was the last time you saw anyone carry 300 rounds of .50 cal. BMG?

Not only that but the cost would be crazy. .223 (5.56, 60 grain) retail for 50 rounds is about $17, where .50 BMG (660 grain)retail 50 rounds is about $200.

The answer to your question is No. Or at least the answer to main point of the post will be NO.

The lethality of the .357 was based on the a statistic of number of deaths per shooting RATIO. By comparing the lethality of a bullet by taking the number of shootings and the number of deaths you get a ratio of deaths per shooting. Doesn't matter the number of shootings vs the number of deaths you get a single ratio which you can compare with all other bullets. This allows you to say this bullet is the most lethal. Which does not in turn mean this bullet killed the most people.

Secondly most people think modern guns are more "lethal" than earlier models like the flintlock but this isn't the case. Rifles have been designed to become less and less lethal over the centuries, their calibre has decreased the amount of powder used has decreased in terms of any single shot rifles are less lethal than they use to be. However they are now more accurate, lighter, fire faster lest prone to failure and so on. The mentality (as was stated in the in post you commented on) is that on the field of war a wounded soldier takes up far more resources to deal with than a dead soldier. More wounded soldiers vs dead ones means your enemy has to use supplies and manpower to care and deal with said soldier which means less capacity to move in supplies to further the enemy's actual objectives.

The truth is people have an expectation that a superior weapon MUST equate to a more lethal weapon and that just isn't the reality of firearms history. Pistols are inferior to rifles as a soldier's weapon ergo they MUST be less lethal in most players minds per shot and as with so many things facts trump opinion.

Sigh indeed...but at least this time it's funny:

300 rounds of 5.56 = 9 lbs.
300 rounds of .308 = 27 lbs.
300 rounds of .50 = 105 lbs.

Do you actually specialize in drawing the wrong conclusions?

Slow down, step away from knee-jerk argument mode for a second or two, and try it again. I said the OP based his opinion on a common perception (or possible misconception as it may be). If the OP had lived during the time when the common perception was that the earth was flat, and had said FO4 was wrong because the earth's flatness would do something or another, it wouldn't change a thing. He would STILL be basing an opinion on a common perception. My statement stands... and it isn't wrong.

Did I not say it was moot in game? What's your point? I mentioned the penetration and the brick wall to demonstrate how real life effects the perception of how much damage a .50 does comparatively. Remember, we are dealing with the original OP's perception that the .44 was overpowered because it apparently does more damage in-game than the .50. Anything that would reinforce that perception is relevant to this discussion... including the effects on a brick wall.

Speaking of brick walls and the effects of the .50, have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaFprrcs7jo. (CAUTION: graphic violence, but not so violent that the History Channel wouldn't show it.)

Note the wall behind the first insurgent, who is hit by an ordinary .50 cal BMG. No, he's not torn in half or even close as far as is visible, but from the way the wall is painted, the wound cannot be minor. Then the guys behind the wall... well, what can I say? I think it's proof that the perception of extreme damage from a .50 is not entirely unfounded.

Oh, and I have an ammo box that contains 600 rounds of 7.62, which is hardly a wart on a .50's rear, but that box is heavy enough to make you think twice about carrying it very far. I can't imagine carrying 600 rounds of .50 cal.

I'd like a Groza myself, as well as a Vintorez. I'll take em' both in 9x39 please and thank you.

The silly pistol hits reasonably hard but is way too slow for serious combat. I can put 3 in the head over a large range of distances with an Assault Rifle. Not quite as good, a .308 Combat Rifle, will put several into the head area very reliably as well. I routinely win draw downs with missile guys.

VATS .... ROTFLMFAO. This game is not a bad shooter.

I am disinclined to link to the more grim videos available of goats and people having done to them what some are apparently saying ballistic gel "proves" can't be done. It's a very easy point to disprove.

The video I linked is pretty mild comparatively...

Projectile lethality is, purely and simply, based on two factors - size of the hole it makes; and what it hits on the way through.

Through meaty tissue, such as muscle, the more surface area of the wound channel allows for more bleeding surface, which increases blood loss, obviously. The more damage to blood rich organs means more blood loss, again. With critical organs being damaged, incapacitation and death is accelerated.

Certain rounds, through design, whether that is intended or not, increase the damage they do. Thin walled high velocity projectiles such as many 5.56mm rounds rip apart and create a number of wound channels, thereby creating more blood loss and potential critical organ damage. Some other high velocity rounds, such as the old Yugoslavian AK47 rounds commenced flipping in tissue particularly early in their movement through tissue, thereby increasing the cross sectional area of the wound channel.

In general terms though, high velocity rounds are inherently unstable, and are only maintained in a nose forward status by rotation and velocity, when either of those slow, as happens when travelling through tissue, they will flip end over end to have a rear-forward aspect....hence the occasional 'little hole at the front, large sterrate wound at the back' of a human target.

Low velocity (generally handgun) rounds don't have this behaviour, so their primary behaviour is simply to punch a hole into the struck body.

Basically though - more velocity and mass of the projectile, the bigger the hole when it hits tissue.