The GoldenEye Arms Reference
Weapon Comparison
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| Site Navigation
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| Home Page | - Introduction and credits.
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| Principles | - General behavior of firearms and explosives.
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| Weapon Details | - Detailed descriptions of each weapon.
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| Weapon Comparison | - Ranking of weapons by performance metrics.
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| Multiplayer Modes | - Analysis of multiplayer weapon combinations.
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| Realism | - Authentic and inaccurate aspects of gameplay.
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| Methodology | - Techniques used to measure several metrics.
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These graphs compare the properties of the GoldenEye firearms.
While interesting,
these complete rankings are of limited practical value
since all weapons are never simultaneously available
except in single player mode with a cheat activated -
in which case the outcome of the engagement is irrelevant.
But they illustrate important tradeoffs
which figure prominently in the analysis of Multiplayer Modes
undertaken on a companion page to this one.
Several of the quantities below were derived from experiment and calculation.
Read the page on Methodology for the details of how these were measured.
Firearm performance
Graphed here are two fundamental properties -
the (a) clip size and (d) firing rate
of each weapon -
along with statistics derived from them.
For semiautomatic weapons the firing rate is approximately that achievable
by a practiced user manually firing the weapon as fast as possible.
The (b) emptying time is the time required
to fire off the weapon's entire magazine.
If a player fires a weapon continuously,
stopping only to reload when its magazine is exhausted,
then the average rate of fire over the whole period is called
the (e) sustainable rate of fire;
and during this process the user will spend
the given percentage (c) of his time reloading.
Note that small differences in firing rate may not be significant;
in particular, the relative rankings of the ZMG and US AR33,
as well as those of the Deustche and KF7,
may not be correct.
Firearm lethality
See the Weapon Details page for how damage is quantified.
While (f) the damage inflicted per shot
is the simplest property of each firearm,
we can multiply this by (d) the firing rate
to determine (g) the rate at which damage
can be projected at a target.
The damage implied by either of these simple metrics
is only achieved if the target is struck consistently in the head.
Since many of the weapons have imperfect aim -
especially when operating at their full rate of fire -
we introduce a fraction (h) called the `medium range accuracy'
which specifies what fraction of the weapon's potential damage
is actually inflicted when a character's head is targeted at medium range
(since some bullets will strike the chest and limbs instead,
and others will miss the target altogether).
See the Methodology page for details on how accuracy is measured.
Multiplying the accuracy into the simple damage statistics
gives us (i,j) figures corrected
for the fraction of misses we may expect.
It is the raw damage rate which is called `power' by the weapon descriptions,
which therefore rank the RC-P90 as the most `powerful' weapon.
Weapons by Classification
The details page
assigns each weapon a classification according to its principle of operation.
This has no practical use and serves an entirely aesthetic literary purpose;
but for any who are interested,
here are the weapons grouped by their category:
- Karate - Unarmed
- Knife - Hunting Knife, Throwing Knife
- Pistol - PP7 Special Issue, DD44 Dostovei, Golden Gun, Silver PP7, Gold PP7
- Revolver - Cougar Magnum
- Machine pistol - Klobb
- Submachine gun - ZMG 9mm, D5K Deustche, Phantom, RC-P90
- Assault rifle - KF7 Soviet, US AR33 Assault Rifle
- Rifle - Sniper Rifle
- Shotgun - Shotgun, Automatic Shotgun
- Energy weapon - Moonraker Laser, Watch Laser, Taser
- Ballistic explosive - Grenade Launcher, Hand Grenade, Tank
- Self-propelled explosive - Rocket Launcher
- Mine - Timed Mine, Proximity Mine, Remote Mine
Copyright © 1998 Brandon Craig Rhodes.
