I was curious to see just how much of an effect changing the magazine type of your weapon had on its base stats... so I grabbed my phone's camera, hopped into Escort Duty's spawn room, did a few tests and recorded the results. Derive what you will from the pictures, but please read below:

• When I say "burst", I mean that I am tapping the trigger, aiming to fire 3-bullet-burst shots (though it can occasionally be as low as 2 bullets or as high as 4). Other than tapping single bullets, this means achieving maximum accuracy & stability with the weapon.
  
• All weapons sets were tested with the exact same attachments: only the magazines were changed.
  
• I used the lines of the caged wall to align my sights/scopes, and strafed backwards until I hit the wall, to ensure all weapons were shooting near-enough the same area, and from the exact same distance.
  
• I took the photos the instant I had finished firing and could ADS, in order to avoid bullet holes disappearing.
  
• I know the quality may not be the best, and I can't really prove I was conducting 100% fair tests, but feel free to try these out for yourself to draw your own conclusions.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/623521ae.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/6c64b5af.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/6e9204b3.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/a8792e91.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/d75ceadf.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/8d86467d.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/469fa160.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/4bba6f97.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/cfaf2cd1.jpg

• Fired off entire clip in burst shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/6267f65c.jpg

• Fired off 5 burst shots (14-16 bullets).

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/45c22715.jpg

• Fired off 5 burst shots (14-16 bullets).

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/89ad6fe5.jpg

• Fired off 5 burst shots (14-16 bullets).

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/20596d72.jpg

• Fired off 8 bullets (semi-automatic) with even timing between shots.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/jhardgrave/641c8780.jpg

• Fired off 8 bullets (semi-automatic) with even timing between shots.

Thoughts:
Weapon set-ups that rely entirely or heavily on accuracy, eg. my Gerund set-up, will see a drop in precision when using mag attachments at medium range and beyond. Other than that, the difference in spread and accuracy between each is minimal but noticeable.

I wouldn't mind actually seeing some of these comparisons done for other set-ups even if its limited to SMG's

I can't be bothered. :tongue: I tried to cover a few different base accuracy/spreads; the high accuracy of the Gerund, low accuracy of the Carb-9, inbetween those with the Bulpdaun, and the semi-auto fire from the Rokstedi is not too dissimilar from pistols.

It's basically safe to assume that in any case; Standard mags will give better precision, followed by Duct-taped, Extended, then Drums giving the least. However, these differences will only really start to be noticeable beyond close range, and deal-breakers at mid-range or beyond.

Thought I'd add that, supposedly according to http://denkirson.xanga.com/738334226/brink/, Standard mags = 0% accuracy penalty, Extended/Duct-taped mags = 10% penalty and Drum mags = 20% accuracy penalty. For PC at least.

O.O ...

ORLY? WOW. :swear:

That is seriously crazy bro. So that's why huh? Interesting.

This is some good stuff here, good job. You should do a comparison with the C-U Gone sight. I love that sight and I feel it works well on a few of the AR's and the Moss- nevermind.... :pinch:

Yeah. The Carb is the SMG with the worst overall accuracy/recoil combo IMO, and it shows when you throw the most cumbersome mag on it.

No more Drums for me ever. :tongue:

Sights won't make a difference, though personally I don't use the C-U-Gone on a weapon unless the weapon is precise, like the Gerund or Drognav since it's quite a small sight.

It would appear with the Gerund that the spread is actually tighter with the Extended Mags.

Good testing Super Pangolin (awesome name)

However, range is an important thing to consider when doing these tests. I did these test myself when I got the game at the European launch but I found that the escort duty mission area is pretty unrealistic of actual ranges that occur within the game's maps, i.e because your shooting at a wall at a set distance (a small one) from yourself, you can only evaluate the accuracy of that gun within that specific portion of the bullet's travel. So while the bullets appear tight on the wall as a bitmap hole mark, the distance between the bullet marks actually increases over distance traveled, because the bullet have a greater time to deviate from the initial point of origin (the gun muzzle).

What this environment is good for testing (and what I find more important to the game of Brink) is testing the relationship between accuracy, stability, and rate of fire and their impacts upon a weapon's minimum (starting) hip fire circle diameter, its maximum hip fire circle diameter (attained after long automatic fire), and the rate of change between these two values.

Essentially, if the gun has a larger maximum hip fire circle, a fast rate of reaching its maximum hip fire circle (I'll call this inflation rate), and a slow rate of returning to the minimum hipfire circle diameter (I'll call this deflation rate), the weapon is best used at pointblank range because it has a higher chance of hitting the target at shorter ranges. If the conditions are reversed and a weapon has a smaller maximum hip fire circle, a slow inflation rate, and a fast deflation rate, then the weapon is best used as a ranged weapon, because it can maintain accuracy at distance. (but note that you will never get a gun that has perfectly balance stats, else the gun would not have a weakness and everyone would be using it).

So I did some test tests to find out how stability, accuracy, and rate of fire influence hip fire minimum and maximum sizes and how the rate of change between these sizes is modified by different scalling of the above parameters.

Here are my results, for anyone interested.

-------------------------

Firstly I found that the weapon type (AR, SMG, pistol etc), gives a gun an initial set of values that the graphs in-game are then based on. So theoretically if a AR and a SMG have the same graph, that does not mean that they have the same performance. So weapon stats are relative to that type of weapon only. The most noticable statistic that is effected by weapon type is minimum hip fire circle diameter, and the somewhat fixed values of effective range.

After this initial value, accuracy influences the size of the maximum diameter of the hipfire circle, with lower accuracy having larger hip fire circle diameters.

Stability is a statistic that effects the rate of change between a gun's hipfire circle to its maximum diameter (its rate of inflation) per bullet, and follows a surge function (i.e. exponential increase per bullet untill the maximum hipfire diameter [determined by accuracy] is achieved).

This thus makes the 'rate of fire' statistic act as an accelerant to stability's inflation rate; however, it does not have any effect upon the deflation rate, and this is solely controled by the weapon stability statistic.

So to make this clear with examples:

Remember the Tampa submachine gun. Super stability. Super rate of fire. Extremely low accuracy. So low accuracy means that the gun has the largest maximum hipfire diameter of a submachine gun (extremely wide spread during automatic fire). Super stability means that per bullet the tampa has a slow increase in reaching the maximum hipfire diameter, and the deflation rate to the minimum hipfire size when not fireing is extremely fast. The super rate of fire means that the stability's inflation rate is under extreme accerlation, making it reach its maximum hipfire circle size quicker.

This means that the tampa is highly ineffective at range but highly effective at close (point blank) range. This is because it's spread is too great and too quickly achieved; however, its quick recovery from automatic fire makes it devestating at close range, because it can be controlled best in close quaters.

Also remember the Gerund AR. Moderate stability, Moderate accuracy, extremely low rate of fire. The moderate accuracy means that the maximum hipfire circle size is quite large, the moderate stability means that their is a slow rate of inflation per bullet, and a moderate rate of deflation per second. The extremely low rate of fire means that the inflation rate is under a force of deceleration, making automatic fire reach maximum bullet spread slower.

This means that the gerund is highly accurate at range but highly ineffective at close range, this is because it cannot sustain accurate automatic fire, as the bullet spread is to wide and the recovery time to maximum accuracy too long. Thus its best used in short bursts, where it maintains its smallest bullet spread. Also the low fire rate makes the gun eaiser to control at range as you can hold the trigger for long periods, and not sacrifice bullet spread.

---------------------------------

So when accounting for magazine clips, the general rule is that they primarily effect the stability statistic, with a minor effect on accuracy. So in scale from least to most penalising the clips go: Standard magazine, Extended magazine, Duct-taped magazine, Drum magazine. The penatly accross this specturm appears to increase by square increments, so the penalty difference between a drum mag and a duct-tape mag will be larger than the difference between a Duct-tape mag and a standard clip.

So with a bigger clip "weight" you select (I use this terms so that its not confusing when considering a duct-taped mag as having more bullets than the exended mag), you are increasing the inflation rate to maximum bullet spread, and slightly increasing the maximum hipfire circle diameter.

Hope that helps with decisions.

It's worth pointing out that on PC you can just press F12 at any time to take a screenshot

That would be a great feature for the consoles. Hopefully they are looking in to this...

Nice thread by the way, and great work by the OP.

I know Odyssey, it's kinda up to the reader to look past the fact it's a wall a few meters in front of me and estimate the spread at longer ranges... also remembering the Range stat, which means at a certain point the damage drops. With that info it's fairly easy to come to the conclusion that a Drum mag Carb is NOT the kind of weapon you want beyond close range haha. Nice work with your post, I'll read it when I'm not busy and have time for a good wall-o-text tackle!

And this was done on PS3, I know stats vary a little between console and PC in terms of the effectiveness of attachments. I do hope they implement an XMB screenshot feature though, like AoT:40th day or MAG.

Didn't know about the stats differing between platforms, so that's good to know.

Yeah, didn't mean for my comment about range to be taken as the statistic for damage drop, I meant more an like effective range, like you picked up on. You did good work with the photo library and I found that really usefull, I just wanted to extend the discussion from the tightness of bullets in bursts to considering the dynamics of the hipfire circle under automatic fire, because that test would give readers a better understanding of how to use a weapon, like whether you should do short 2-3 second burst, or 4-5 second burst, or can effectively control automatic fire; and what weapon attachment you should use to compliment that style of fire.

I did my tests on the xbox version so the stability statistic might be more greatly manipulated on that console than a PS3 because the controls are more robust and blocky.

Yeah, sorry about the wall of text . I wanted to do a picture/video library like you did but I currently I don't have the setup to do so. I would have liked to have done scale measurements of the diameters of the reticle because hipfireing in this game (with automatic weapons and pistols) is way more effective than sighting, as sighting only seems to increase accuracy (reduce maximum bullet spread) by a fixed percentage determine by weapon type, I think: its hard to tell without the circle being visible.

I find that every gun has stupidly low accuracy and ridiculously high recoil. For no good reason. Yes, I am disappointed.

Lrn2burstfireADS.

Only the Carb, Tampa, Euston, Chinzor and Gotlung have terrible base accuracy. The first couple to few bullets of every other gun are usually right on target in their given ranges.

I do burst fire. It's a habit I picked up in other games.
The accuracy rates still svck. Even the relatively accurate guns won't hit their mark if you fire more then three bullets.
And iron-sighting somehow makes burst fire even less useful, as hip firing in bursts is consistently more accurate. Especially at longer ranges.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, or the jerky as hell character movement, the craptastic iron-sights that seem to increase spread, the painful kill times due to these shoddy weapons except for in the hands of the A.I. or pointblank range. But every single one of them leaves something to be desired.

Primarily increased accuracy and very slightly enhanced damage for sharper gun play.

One of the things the devs repeated a bit was that they'd boost health above the usual 3-hit-kills you see in games like Call Of Duty or Homefront. You'll probably need to put a few more bullets in enemies than you're probably use to if you've just been playing COD or similar.

I'm not using burst-fire that much myself. I'm using red-dot sights and close quarters to bring down enemies and reload fast. Not ammo-efficient, but as a light player I'm capturing command posts a bit and have an opportunity to refill my own ammo.

I really do understand that. And, I don't mind it. But when you do that, and don't make weapon clips/magazines compensate for it, it does drag down the experience. Again, especially when your weapons are so inaccurate past a small burst. Point blank spraying shouldn't be the most effective strategy is all.