keihaswarrior said:
I still don't see why he is making all suppressed weapons shoot bullets that travel at subsonic speeds and therefore do less damage.
A large premise of this mutator is simply unrealistic!
Ok keihaswarrior let's make it simple, not too technical and explanatory.
A supressor actualy reduces the muzzle blast caused by gazes escaping at high presure from the barrel so the main bang is suppressed by giving more place for gazes to expand while containing them then slowing their exit through baffles or whatever technique is used in a given suppressor.
A suppressor also hide the muzzle flash and acts like a flash hider.
Now that the main gunshot bang is reduced or in some cases silenced, an other important thing remains : If the bullet is supersonic and thus breaks the sound barrier, a supersonic boom called the ballistic crack (in case of projectiles) is produced, and this crack can be heard at very long distances, so the suppression is only partial as the sound signature is still present.
To attain a full degree of supression, in the addition of a suppressor, we have then to load our weapon with subsonic ammunitions that do not produce the ballistic crack. Some handguns cartridges are inherently subsonic (.45 ACP, .40 S&W...) and are very well suppressed just with a muzzle suppressor attached to the weapon. Other handguns or submachine guns which normaly use supersonic amunitions like 9mm Luger can be fully supressed by using heavier subsonic bullets which produce as much energy as supersonic bullets of the same caliber when fired from a shorter barrel because of the higher bullet mass... in this case the suppression is full and still effective as only little degradation in performance occures.
But when it comes to fully suppress a weapon that normaly fires bullets that leave the muzzle at two or three times the speed of sound, and I'm speaking about riffles, the performance degradation is severe when subsonic ammunitions are used as a riffle bullet relies more on its velocity to produce energy than on its mass which is usualy low. But if you want to fully supress a rifle, it's at this cost... However there are specialised subsonic ammunitions designed to be used in suppressed rifles, these cartridges like the us Whisper and russian SP cartridges uses a long and heavy bullet with a respectable amount of powder charge, these bullets leave the muzzle at subsonic velocities but can achieve pretty long range and produce a good amount of energy which is more than the energy of most medium handguns loaded to full power ammunitions. But the use of Whisper or SP cartridges in weapons not specialy designed for them requires the change of barrel by a wider one with faster riffling twist, the receiver must be changed too if the case of the Whisper cartridge is bigger than the chamber.
Back to our infiltration weapons, suppression of 9mm submachine guns is not problematic because the subsonic bullet weighs 147 grains and leaves the muzzle at +/- 1000 FPS compared to the M882 that weighs 112 grains and have a muzzle velocity of +/- 1200 FPS, the performances and recoil are roughly the same, even better for the MP5/40 and Mk.23 that are inherently subsonic and then act the same as if they were unsuppressed.
Now in the category of suppressed 5.56mm, the things are diferents... To fully supress a 5.56mm rifle we must use a heavier bullet, loaded with less powder and filler to fill the empty space inside the case and must be capable of cicling the automatic action, this bullet could be 80 grains and leaves the muzzle at 1040 FPS when shot from M16 it has the same amount of energy of a small pistol shooting short 9mm bullets while having more penetration capability, the performances of such a cartridge is not quite up the standard of an assault riffle, but once again... that's the cost of 5.56 full suppression.
When it came to chose through a realistic aproach, I had the choice of using the M855 62 grains supersonic bullet, make a ballistic crack sound and implement it as distant fire sound and far distant fire sound, the rifle will keep all its behaviours and will only benefit of a muzzle flash hider and modified firing sound.
The other choice was to do like we're using 80 grains subsonic bullets which are completely inaudible at mid to long distances, that produce very low recoil, low energy and less range.
My choice was made and it's the second which is in my opinion the best trade-off, this gives meaning to the use of a supressor on 5.56 rifles.