[Suggestion] Rifle bullets are made from copper (and lead) NOT iron.

97 votes

You never have enough iron in the game, but you don't bother mining hardly any copper. Iron bullets would damage the rifling in the barrel in real life, so it seems like a win win.
If I may also say, I feel so wasteful every time turn an entire ingot into 1 bullet. At least 2 per, even with a increased gunpowder cost.

Done Weapons Suggested by: Chris Bass (27 Sep, '21) • Upvoted: 16 Aug, '23 • Comments: 11

Comments: 11

01 Oct, '21
Robert
I would have to agree! You need iron for a ton of tier 2 items, but you also need to waste more iron to convert it to steel in tier 3. And then try to make bullets on top of that? I will also go into caves and never mine the copper, there is very little use for it, but it's found within every single cave. Still love the game!! Just an idea.
01 Oct, '21
Ryan Y.
I agree with Chris, both on the inclusion of copper bullets and the conversion ratio of non-renewable materials into expendables. Copper bullets have reduced expansion and weight shedding upon impact--making them better for penetration, but reducing the damage they cause to internal organs. For a brief review of differences between lead and copper bullets from a NZ organization see:

https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/Homogenous+copper+bullets+can+be+inhumane.html
*some discretion advised, as the researchers show pictures displaying organ damage caused by both types of rounds.

This could be translated as copper bullets do less damage than iron (lead would be preferred,) but have the ability to critically hit large game like the mammoth we saw in BW3. It integrates an existing resource for a specific role, could use the same selection menu as choosing an arrow for the bow, and has the benefit of being grounded by ballistic research informed by common physics concepts.
12 Oct, '21
Azriel82
It makes sense to make bullets from copper not iron. Enough things are made from iron or steel, not enougth things are made from copper.
15 Oct, '21
Strung
Or just make brass from copper and zinc. Aren’t most casing brass anyways? Plus then we get another ore to mine :)
17 Oct, '21
Zinna
Copper or lead tips do more damage than iron/steel bullets to animals. There is penetration differences though. Damage with enough power behind it come from softer or hollow point tips like copper/lead, that rip bigger holes and meat out of a body. Full metal jackets (military steel tip bullets)rounds are for going through armor, but wore out the guns to being useless after a short while. If your hunting animals and trying to drop them, steel bullet would be the worst thing you could choose. Copper/Lead is the true choice. Iron and steel need nothing to do with ammo except bolt and arrow tips.
16 Dec, '21
Samantha
My issue with this is that for example the last few prospects i played, we hardly found any copper. With the amounts of billets you need (like arrows with bows), guns wouldn’t even be worth playing because of lack of resources. Iron is super abundant.
21 Dec, '21
u
1 add lead nodes
2 rebalance bullet material costs
3 add gun cleaning/repair/bullet crafting kit
31 Jan, '22
stb155
While this is technically correct, it would be a bad thing to change it.
Since there is lots of iron ore, but not so much copper ore, and you need tons of copper for electronics, and some for other stuff.

And afair steel core ammo also exists.
20 Jul, '22
ganondorf16
it would be a great change, because copper is almost useless. You need like, 100 copper ingot in the whole game and its kinda easy to farm, but u need maybe 500 iron ingot or more
17 Aug, '22
Dan
please no, Iron is incredibly overabundant whilst copper is a pain if you are considering t4 at all, which is where you usually transition into using bullets at all. So long as t4 uses so much copper for electronics (3 ingots per 1 electronic) I can't agree to having bullets be copper based.
13 May, '23
cmopatrick
Maybe swap copper for iron between the two shoulder weapons.
Copper for the brass casings at the same 1:5 ratio you now have for Iron casings. If you need something soft, use platinum (not sure why it the devs chose to use it as the metal stronger than steel, but is was a mistake that I doubt will be corrected).
Buckshot (and slugs, for that matter) are lead or steel. Use Iron nails in place of the copper ones you now use, unless you plan to introduce lead. Even if you later add sabot rounds to the shotgun, they would still be a harder metal.