(Research) Weapon effectiveness against bosses

Intro
I think, all regular Zombie Escape players have heard a lot of myths about what weapon is the most effective against so called "bosses". I've heard them too. Some people say M249 is the best in this case. Others say that P90 and TMP are better. So I decided to make my own research about what weapon is the most effective. I hope this will help PlagueFest ZE server fail less at bosses.

Criteria
The most effective weapon will be the one that has the highest number of damage (damage, NOT bullets, will be explained later) per second. Reloading time will be included.
I was testing all weapons on two maps: my ze_Portal_Story_v3_1 and Luffaren's ze_predator_ultimate_v3 as they show in numbers what damage each weapon deals to boss. Most maps have the same health system, so the results will fit on any map.

Numbers and calculations
When I was testing Portal's new HP-bar system, I noticed that some weapons deal more dmg/bullet than others. For example, M249 deals ~2dmg/bullet while MP5 - just 1dmg/bullet. I don't know why exactly does this happen.
So, I've tested ALL weapons on both Portal and predator maps. Here are average numbers:

As you can see, more powerful weapons have more damage per bullet.
Now lets watch at actual fire rate of each weapon. By fire rate I mean the time you need to fire a FULL clip and FULLY reload. After getting these numbers we can calculate the actual fire rate: BULLETS/SEC = CLIP / TIME.

Now, when we have DMG/BULLET and BULLETS/SEC numbers, we can calculate DMG/SEC.
DMG/SEC = DMG/BULLET x BULLETS/SEC.
That's what we were looking for. We have next results:


According to this table, we can select the winner:

1st place, gold medal, M249 with 14.79 dmg/sec
2nd place, silver medal, P90 with 14.04 dmg/sec
3rd place, bronze medal, Galil with 11.71 dmg/sec

Epilogue
I hope this information is going to be useful. Thank you for attention.

I thought most ze health systems use a specific number of hits required.

EDIT: Did you add re-load time to those times per clip? Cba to read the whole post again.

yes. Usually mappers make it 1 dmg/bullet. So when a bullet hits a target -> -1 hp. But SOMEWHY it glitches, and more powerfull weapons call this 2 times/bullet.

Post Merged, Feb 19, 2013

This is indeed good stuff, I was always curious about this.

Ha, he said clip instead of magazine. @[31Bravo] Ray

But otherwise, this is awesome! I'll still be using my M3 Benelli regardless of numbers though =P

A round of applause for your research though! Very useful information.

I've been going crazy on shot guns ever since my brother told me about it though. Each shot will fire more than one bullet, is that taken into consideration?

Yes, I'm quite sure it's accounted for by looking at the first table he posted: M3: "16.75 dmg/bullet(shot)".

M249 is 2 heavy , predator kills u faster then if u are slow^^

but anyway nice list ty

I think mappers should start wasting a few entities to give some weapons 'extra damage'. I've been thinking for long that a boss that moves fast as hell and gets -100hp by awp/scout for long, and I think that similar things could be interesting. Also, I don't think the bullets are counted in the same way on all maps. I'm almost certain paper/dejavu do not count m249 as 2 hits, because I think I tested it when I saw it happen on portal. My memory is crap though, so I don't know.

Cool thing sub.

What happens when 1 bullet counts as 2 hits is that it went through the model and hit it again; this happens mostly with stronger weapons (like M249). A clear example is, like I do, shooting Bahamut on his fingers/hands when he has them spread, making it possible to hit 2 fingers with the same bullet, or the wing behind.
(Worth mentioning that I noticed this for the first time on HL2 Dog Model, on a test map).

On Predator, weird enough, his model has a "double-face"; since under the mask the real predator-face is also modeled (the model was ripped from a game where the Predator could have his mask ON/OFF). This makes the double-hits quite common on his head (but not exclusives to that area) giving the impression that head shots hurt him more than normal shots (and they usually do, being easily counted as double hits).

This is different with shotguns, since they just shoot many projectiles that hit the model many times; making them, even if still worse than P90s and M249s, still better than what most people think they are (and making the 2.2 Shotgun the best boss-weapon on a No-Reload server).

Anyway... The reason for double-shoots is that; so now you can test (if you want) what are the most vulnerable spots of the bosses.
Is also worth mentioning that the better weapon for Normal/Hyper Predators may not be the same as the one for Hard/Ultimate Predators, since having to move yourself to avoid attacks, or taking into account the number of bullets a M249 can miss on a distance at a moving target relatively small (specially compared to big static bosses like Bahamut or GLaDOS) is an important factor to remember.

Good stuff, thanks SubDelt. I like to dick around with shottys and it's good to know they're decently effective on bosses too; this'll allow me to play my way more and still feel like a teamplayer. The other thing that surprised me is the wholly low dmg awp bullets put out. I wonder why. Neat info too, Kaemon, I'll definitely put that to use on Mako and Pred.

I'm usually pretty quiet in-game and this is probably my first or second forum post in over 2 years of play here (most as Commander Fantastic, now as piss up a rope), but Imma try to be more talkative cause it's guys like y'all that make this jive max fun. Thanks!

is this assuming you hit the bosses 100% of the time with perfect accuracy? (in maps where bosses move, the m249 might be bad because of the higher recoil compared to p90)

When use right, M249 is awesome at holding spot. Only 1 M249 is enough to hold horde. But then I get zombified because no one covered my escape because I held for them and as usual they ran with their tails between their leg.

YOU HEAR ME HUMANS YOU SACK OF MANURE, I DIED SO YOU CAN LIVE. EARN THIS

Is the p90 ammo a clip or mag? I always used "clip" though...But isnt it something inbetween? mh^^ @[31Bravo] Ray

I didnt expect that the TMP would be so bad...Ak is better lol....

Maybe its interesting to know unlimited ammo settings too, on some bosses we have unlimited ammo or on other servers. I believe autoshotgun was the best weapon then.

Btw I still wont shoot preds head after Keamons post, I doubt that I will hit him more if I aim for his head, I probably will miss more than doublecounts.

Yes. I was using NOCLIP to get to bosses as close as possible for 100% accuracy.

My input here would be to say that I highly doubt the predator has a double collision model or any of the sort.

I mean is there like a 1 inch collisionbox on his mask and his head collision behind that mask? I'm pretty sure bullets are not being calculated on the mesh being hit, but on the collision boxes.
Anyway this is very helpful but I knew most of this already, as I'm most of the time busy with collisionboxes.

About the weapons, that seems totally accurate. I've always known the Galil to be effective, but P90 an M249 both their ups and downs outmatch it.

One thing being missed here is to say that stacking and shooting throught each other also removes some bullets, but everyone knows that so no need to explain.

I didn't mention that because it's rather a stupid teammates problem than a weapon problem.

I noticed the combined times for the "Fire a full _____(Your definition here) AND reload" so i thought i'd separate the reload times for the sake of consistency.

There are faster and slower draw times as well, so i'll add those too.

EDIT - You will have to find out which ones can shoot through teammates, (as people love to stack when defending and in boss fights) and each person counts as a physical entity in the map A.K.A Wall/object. Rule of thumb is all rifles, including sniper rifles can shoot through the team.

Pistols

• Glock 18 - Reload 2.77s; Draw 1.31s (Fastest reload)
• USP - Reload 2.98s; Draw 1.25s
• P228 - Reload 3.05s; Draw 1.32s
• Deagle - Reload 2.58s; Draw 1.25s (Middle Ground)
• 5.7 - Reload 3.25s; Draw 1.41s
• Dualies - Reload 4.40s; Draw1.45s

Shotguns

• M3 (pump) - Reload 5.43s (for full); Draw 1.35s
• M1014 (auto) - Reload 5.41s (for full); Draw 1.36s

SMG

• TMP - Reload 2.48s; Draw 1.26s
• MAC10 - Reload 3.45s; Draw 1.31s
• MP5 - Reload 3.56s; Draw 1.47s (Decent reload speed, but slowest draw for SMG)
• UMP45 - Reload 3.75s; Draw 1.39s
• P90 - Reload 3.56s; Draw 0.93s (Super fast draw, decent reload speed. This is why it's a popular choice for ZE)

Assault Rifles

• Galil - Reload 3.44s; Draw 1.44s
• FAMAS - Reload 3.50s; Draw 1.26s
• AK47 - Reload 2.81s; Draw 1.36s
• M4A1 - Reload 3.26s; Draw 1.28s
• SG552 - Reload 3.47s; Draw 1.37s
• AUG - Reload 3.92s; Draw 1.26s

Sniper Rifles

• Scout - Reload 3.05s; Draw 1.65s
• SG550 - Reload 3.65s; Draw 1.05s
• AWP - Reload 3.64s; Draw 1.26s
• G3GS1 - Reload 3.96s; Draw 1.34s

Machine Gun

• M249 - Reload 5.64s; Draw 1.22s

Thoughts

By this graph you can tell the obvious choice for optimal firepower, reload time and damage, the P90 and Deagle combo would best suit the "main" part of the team, the ones that only solely carry P90s of course, however considering ZE and some maps quantity over quality is sometimes better. Dualies are still a good choice where you need lots of bullets fast, however when it comes down to an empty P90 and Dualies, you're looking at ~8 seconds of reload time.

In my opinion, It seems like having the P90 paired with a lower capacity pistol like the 5.7 or the p228 would make a decent combo. You have higher accuracy and faster reload times but the downside is of course fewer bullets.

If you're going to be one of the guys that takes a shotgun or M249 to the boss room, don't pick up dualies as it would increase load times dramatically for yourself, as you could easily go to 10 seconds of reload time at the highest. A faster and lighter weapon would better suit your loadout. I would actually prefer if the M249/shotgun guys took a glock to the boss rooms, as most times it's hits, not damage, that counts. m249/glock combo IMO is the superior boss-stomper loadout as these guys should be conserving main weapon ammunition instead of spraying it and wasting bullets. It's hella easy to empty a full m249.

i'm going to sleep now.