Switching to a "top-down" recoil system

This is something that’s been bugging me since I first found Cataclysm, so with this continuation going on I’m gonna’ throw it out here. This is, admitably, based upon general physics principles so if it turns out I’m incorrect due to some quirk of firearm ballistics physics, well, so be it for me to make an ass of myself.

Recoil is, in the most absolute basic sense, the measure of the energy imparted on the user of a gun after saig gun is affected by the energy of the discharge of a bullet. A bullet has energy from the powder ignition, but this by itself isn’t recoil energy; rather, recoil energy can only exist after taking into account the physical characteristics of a gun - specifically the overall mass of the gun and the way in which it handles the energy imparted by the bullet.

When it comes to recoil, Cataclysm currently does something very strange: while it allows guns to partially negate recoil energy, as seen in negative recoil values on their stat sheet, it also allows them to increase recoil energy over the initial energy of the bullet, something which really should not happen. As a bullet’s fired, all of its energy is already being directed towards the opening of the barrel (assuming a completily sealed firing chamber said for the aforementioned barrel opening, which is certainely not the case but is suitable enough for the subject at hand). All of the energy is directed into the gun, and the gun is acted upon in a given matter depending upon its effective mass (affected by a number of factors, such as the strength and weight of the person holding it or whether it’s been affixed to something, among other things).

A gun’s design can greatly change the amount of recoil perceived by its user. At a base level, this is a heavier gun rising and moving less as it’s fired, but can also include more intricate factors like channelling and diverting ignition gasses, as seen in recoilless rifles. A gun can thus negate that bullet energy only slightly and thus have lots of recoil or it can negate it completily and have no recoil, but in the end always has a negative effect on the bullet’s transferred energy - it can never have a positive effect.

In the same strain, certain gun add-ons have a habit of actually increasing a gun’s recoil energy when the exact opposite should be the case. This is attributed to “vibrations”, but such is a rather poor excuse. A modification which adds any signifigant mass to the gun should decrease the recoil values, while those that decrease it for whatever reason (short barrels come to mind) would result in higher recoil values. We can, however, make exceptions for certain add-ons in which the increased recoil is useful for simulating some effect - a long-range scope, for example, would require time to be re-adjusted and make it difficult to handle the weapon in conventional manners, thus making rapid fire infeasable.

Ergo, I suggest an overhaul of current ammunition and gun recoil values to better reflect proper physics:

A) Calculate an effective value for bullet energy and use this for the recoil value of a given ammunition type (for the immediate term we could use current bullet values + highest recoil value on a gun using said caliber)
B) Re-value gun and gun add-on recoil values according to the mass and other defining characteristics of the object in question.

So in short, you’re saying that we shouldn’t let the guns themselves add recoil. That makes sense.

I’m not sure, that was not easy to understand for me… Hum… I would say :

Gameplay > Real Life

Another way to look at the recoil rating, is thinking of it as the average for that round. Some weapons handle recoil better than average, some handle it worse.

Keep in mind that generally Recoil in Cataclysm also includes how the weapon handles, and anything else that affects sighting.
Basically: Recoil = Total difficulty in getting back on sight picture, factoring in recoil, poor weapon design, etc.

It’s something that might need to be broken off from the Recoil stat, but functionally, it’s not too far from the truth of it.

However, I think I can agree that recoil modifiers should be increased on ammo, in order to remove positive modifiers on weapons, and equally increasing the negative modifiers proportionally. Basically just doing a range shift to put all the positive on the ammo side, and increasing the negatives on the weapon side.