Spread and Recoil

Spread and recoil  
Spread when fully aimed 0 (no hip spread)
Spread from firing None: firing does not widen the cone
Spread from moving Yes, scales with speed and stance
Recoil Kicks the view after each shot; does not widen the cone
Buckshot 8 pellets per shell

No shot in Wardogs goes exactly where the crosshair points. Each shot is sent in a random direction inside a small cone around the aim, and the size of that cone depends on how the player is aiming, moving and standing. Recoil is a separate effect: it moves the view after a shot, so the next shots start from a different point.

Overview

Two things decide where a shot goes. The first is the spread cone, which is always centred on the aim point and changes with how you move and aim. The second is recoil, which pushes the aim up or sideways after each shot and so changes where the next shots are aimed. Firing does not make the spread grow over a burst, so a long burst does not get wider by itself.

How it works

  • Aiming down sights removes hip spread. Once the weapon is fully aimed down the sights, the hip spread is zero. Partly aimed counts as hip fire at full value.
  • Moving widens the cone. Hip spread scales with your speed compared with a reference speed for your stance. Standing and running make the cone widest, lying prone keeps it narrowest.
  • Stance matters. Prone and crouch give smaller spread than standing for the same speed.
  • Air. A shot fired while airborne uses a separate spread value of 10 degrees (half-angle) for every weapon. The stance and speed multipliers do not apply while airborne.
  • Aim sway moves the shot. In the game’s default camera mode, the sway of the weapon as you aim is added to the view’s rotation, and the bullet leaves along that view. So sway changes where the shot goes, not only what the camera shows. Sway is divided by the sight’s magnification, so a higher-magnification sight steadies it (see Sights and Optics). No weapon in the data changes this mode (derived from the game’s code).
  • Vehicle-mounted guns. A gun on a vehicle with its own spread setting eases toward that spread at about 25 per second rather than jumping to it. When the gunner is fully aimed down sights, the spread is zero. Plain mounted weapons have no spread of their own (a static reading of the game code, not checked in play).
  • Attachments. Bipods, muzzle devices and foregrips change the spread. Their multipliers are listed below.
  • Zeroing. The data does not list the zero angle for each sight range. The game works it out while it runs. At each zeroing range it predicts the bullet’s drop over that distance and stores the angle that drop implies, in degrees, for each ammunition type (derived from the game’s code).
  • Recoil is applied after the shot. The bullet leaves along the view as it was before that shot’s kick. Earlier kicks have already moved the view, and they are part of the next shot’s aim.
  • Shotguns. Each buckshot shell fires 8 pellets. Each pellet has its own random direction inside a cone, and the pellets all land at a small spread around the aim. Part of the pattern is a tight inner cluster: about 20 percent of pellets on the M500 and 14 percent on the MP43 (derived), rising to 26 and 34 percent on the M500 with the Improved Cylinder and Full Choke.

Numbers

Hip spread in degrees (half-angle), from standing still to full speed. Full speed is the reference speed for the stance: 4.0 m/s standing, 2.5 m/s crouched and 0.5 m/s prone.

Weapon class Stand Crouch Prone
Assault rifle, DMR, LMG, pistol, shotgun 3 to 6 2 to 4 1.5 to 3 (rifle), 1 to 2 (others)
SMG 2 to 4 1.5 to 3 1 to 2
Sniper 4 to 7 3 to 6 2 to 4
Bow 1 to 2 0.5 to 1 0.5

The PKM uses the sniper values. Fully aimed, all of these are 0.

The data stores these as one spread curve row for each class and stance (29 rows in all, including the mounted machine guns and the stable mount). Each row is a straight line from input 0 to input 1, and the stored numbers carry no unit in the curve table. The degree reading above comes from the spread pipeline page, not from this table. What the 0 to 1 input measures is not traced.

Attachment multipliers on the spread:

Attachment Multiplier
Bipod, mounted 0.45
Bipod, unfolded 1.15
Muzzle devices 0.88 to 0.99
Foregrips 0.76 to 0.94

Shotgun pellet spread for the two shotguns in the data: the outer edge of the M500’s pellet cone is about 1.6 degrees from the centre, and the MP43’s about 1.9 degrees. Both add a random shift to the centre of the pattern, up to 2 degrees on the M500 and 3 degrees on the MP43.

Tips that follow from the numbers

  • Aim down sights for accuracy. Aiming removes the hip spread entirely, which is 3 to 7 degrees on a standing player.
  • Crouch or go prone before a long shot. Standing still, crouching cuts a rifle’s hip spread from 3 to 2 degrees, and going prone cuts it to 1.5 degrees.
  • Stopping helps the cone shrink. Spread depends on your current speed, so a player who stops quickly gets back to the smaller cone.
  • Bursts do not get wider. Because firing does not add bloom, the 5th shot of a burst has the same spread as the 1st, as long as speed and stance stay the same.
  • Recoil moves the aim, it does not widen the cone. Compensate for the kick by moving the crosshair back, not by expecting a wider spread.
  • Bipods help a lot. A mounted bipod cuts spread to 45% of its base.

Recoil figures

Recoil patterns (the points that set each shot’s kick) are different for each weapon. Season 2 changed recoil patterns on four weapons, including the SKS and SVD. Every weapon’s recoil and camera-kick values are listed row by row on Weapon Spread and Recoil Data.

Spread in the air

While a player is airborne, hip-fire spread uses the game’s in-air value of 10.0 degrees. Only the grenade launcher sets that value itself, to the same 10.0 degrees, and the weapon’s spread multiplier is not applied on this path. The game files have no per-shot bloom field, so spread does not build up with each shot.

See also

Sources