I dont think you are giving the effect of mass enough credit. To step away from shooting metaphors lets talk about pugalism. In my youth I used to do allot of boxing. Now I'm a fairly big guy (195cm, 117kg) When I would punch someone my own size he would roll with the impact being able to absorb the energy fairly well. In contrast If I was to punch a guy 20kg lighter then me there would be a significant stagger if not go down. Why? He doesnt have the mass to absorb that energy. In some cases the guy my own size would go down as well. In boxing circles people would say he "had a glass jaw". This is the free radical I have been talking about in regards to animal toughness & by extension the critical chance you have mentioned.Sherab86 wrote: I was thinking about this little more. And I think this might be not soley because of differences in mass, but also due to actual dimensions of a chest region...
Some animals just are not able to absorb much damage & the amount of damage they can absorb before they drop scales as the greater disparity between their size the incoming damage they are taking.
In game terms this can be expressed as an algorithm. Keeping it simple, a chart delineating the damage effect by caliber on game animal could be created. EG: 270win K/O chance vs Goats 30%, Mule/White/Black deer 10%, Elk 2%, Bear/Moose/Buffalo 0%.
This sort of chart could be created for caliber. I gave the goats a 30% chance which while sounds high probably isnt high enough. My only experiance with goats are the speed goats aka Pronghorn & talk about an animal that has no will to live. Im pretty sure you could knock them over with harsh language LOL
In application it would look like this. When an animal takes a hit from a 270 the game 1st checks to see the nervous system was hit. If yes the animal drops. If no the game does a critical hit check against the aforementioned arbitrary values. If it passes the animal drops. If no then the animal scampers away & the bleedout model kicks in.
There should not be a 100% chance of the animal dropping save a hit to the nervous system. Conversely even a bullet through the heart that fails the critical chance will run away. Regardless what TV shows a hit to the heart is not immediately fatal. Ive have shot several deer through the heart that have managed to run 10-50yds afterwords. They were just incredibly tough deer.
I honestly believe this as mentioned is doable in game. EW has to have some sort of algorithm already in place to account for the differant reactions the animals already have when hit. We are just looking to expand on what they already have. If anyone from EW is actually watching this thread I would be more then happy to do the grunt work for you & create these algorithms.
while I agree with you all of this is interesting & there is no getting around that clinical death happens after severe nervous system damage or rapid blood pressure drop we need to focus on what all that means in game terms. It is not beyond imaging that some of the animals I have dropped when shot were lying there in a state of shock or maybe even knocked unconscious by the hydrodynamic or nervous system shock until they succumbed to the physical injury to their bodies. In some cases those animals legs twitched but the fact of the matter is they expired where they landed either immediately from a critical chance (glass jaw) or as as a consequence of incapacitation & I think that is what needs to be modeled in game.Sherab86 wrote: What I mean by this - if you place your shot, lets say, into lower portion of a whitetail's chest (but lets assume it is still double lung hit), this will be still closer to the spine, than in case of an elk, or a moose. Hence, by avarage, accoustic wave created by bullet's passage has greater chance to reach spine cord with enough of "force" (speaking informally - I'm not such a scientific purist as the author of linked articles ) to incapacitate a deer, than it has in case of elk. Also shots through a shoulder blade naturaly bring in high trauma to a spine nad nervous system as such. So I guess, hunters having a habit to shot through scapula may notice instant drops more often, than those with shoot rather just behind a leg - perhaps.
There is also another mechanism author of reffered articles mention in his section on "A mechanics of leathal wounding":There is another mechanism of cardiac arrest that is less well understood but which may account for the nearly instantaneous death of game animals hit with modern weapons and that is induced cardiac fibrillation and arrest. The precise mechanism for the onset of the cardiac arrest is not fully understood, but its effect is well documented. It may involve some type of local neurological or humeral communication between the heart and lungs that gets short-circuited. Alternatively, a violent wound to the lung tissue may create a tiny embolism that interrupts cardio-pulmonary function at a critical moment.
Additionally, there is some evidence to suggest that the sudden pressure resulting from the bullet's passage (through the heart?) coupled with the coincidence of the systolic peak of the blood pressure cycle may communicate up the arteries to the brain and produce, in effect, a ruptured cranial aneurysm resulting in an indirect injury to the central nervous system.