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This is a fairly lengthy read, you have been warned.

I’ve been spending a lot of time learning more about the game, but the one part of it I just could not find satisfactory explanation on was Bullet penetration, aka Wall-banging. After nearly a dozen hours of testing, I've condensed my findings into five key points, along with a chart and table.

#1: Every surface can be Wall-banged if you try hard enough

#2: Wall-bang damage is based around distance traveled through the wall

#3: Different materials affect damage falloff by limiting the maximum distance a bullet can travel through it, with damage scaling in proportion

#4: Penetration levels of weapons work differently than materials, setting ranges that affect damage scaling

#5: The resulting damage is greatly inconsistent, inconsistently

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My Testing Method:

I utilized the practice range’s training dummy set to a distance of 10m for most of my testing. This allows me to test brick and wood materials easily from the right side, and metal from underneath the track the target platform moves on. Using a ping, I can set the location of the dummy’s head to then be lined up and aimed at through the wall. I then take hundreds of attempts with a weapon to move pixel by pixel to the lowest and greatest distances that the bullet can pass through the wall, checking the registered damage above the dummy's head, then returning to the last bullet hole I created on the wall.

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One Primary Testing Method In Action

Damage ranges:

Here is the juicy part, but it's going to come with a few asterisks.

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In Summary-

Low penetration weapons:

25%-80%

Example:

Spectre has a minimum headshot wall-bang of 19 damage which is the lowest it will consistently go before not piercing the wall at all, and a maximum of 62 damage when going through a wall by just the smallest amount. (The Spectre normally deals 78 damage on a headshot).

Medium penetration weapons:

30%-99%

Example:

Vandal has a minimum of 48 damage and a maximum of 159 damage (The Vandal normally deals 160 damage on a headshot)

High penetration weapons:

30%-100%

Example:

Sheriff has a minimum of 47 damage and a maximum of 159 damage (The Sheriff normally deals 159 damage on a headshot)

The difference of 99% to 100% as the maximum damage between medium and high penetration weapons looks small here, but the important distinction is that high penetration weapons can pierce through a decent amount of wall while still maintaining 100% damage, while medium penetration weapons like the Vandal will lose damage immediately and dramatically through a wall-bang of any size.

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Shooting Through A Wall And Dealing Full Damage

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To best visualize how each weapon class is affected, here is a graph representing the approximate damage falloff curves for each based on my testing.

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To reiterate, this is based on the results of my own testing. I do not have access to the source code to confirm the exact formulas so this is based on experimentation. At this point you may be noticing on these graphs a weird tail at the end of each curve. This is intentional, and probably the strangest part of my testing results. While I listed a minimum damage range above, I have on several occasions gone lower than that (such as a Vandal hitting for 41 which could only happen with a headshot but is below the 48 damage it will almost always bottom out at) though the chance of getting a shot to do this would be maybe 2/100 attempts. There seems to be just the tiniest range that returns these outlier values (such as 9.99m-10.00m) as its extremely rare and only happens at the farthest tip.

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Further detail on my 5 main points ~

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#1 Every surface can be wall-banged if you try hard enough

I have found no walled surfaces that cannot be shot through when using a slight enough angle. This includes any type of material, even the rims of a teleporter. The only “surface” I tested you cannot wall-bang is the teleporter field itself, as bullets simply pass through this normally.

#2: Wall-bang damage is based around distance traveled through the wall

While it has been said that angles decide the wall-bang, this is only partially true. The same 45-degree angle can deal much more damage when right on the corner than when further into the wall.

Fun Fact: A bullet can also pass-through multiple surfaces if the walls are close enough together. The interesting thing about how this works is that it appears to treat the distance from when it first enters a wall to when it exits its last hole as one solid wall. This means the air between the two objects is counted together as part of one wall for deciding if it will pierce again for the second time.

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Shooting Through Two Objects With One Bullet

#3: Different materials affect damage falloff by limiting the maximum distance a bullet can travel through it, with damage scaling in proportion

Testing has shown that regardless of material, (be it wood, stone, or metal) I can reach the same maximum and minimum value at the furthest ranges of a successful wall-bang. I’ve found that as the density of the material goes up, it simply restricts the angle at which you can pierce the same wall.

#4: Penetration levels of weapons work differently than materials, setting ranges that affect damage scaling

High penetration weapons can pierce the wall while maintaining full damage. Medium penetration weapons will start to fall off gradually but starts right away, whereas low penetration weapons will immediately lose a fixed chunk of damage regardless of how little of a wall they pass through.

#5: The resulting damage is wildly inconsistent, inconsistently

This is one of the most frustrating parts about how wall-banging works (and how it hampers testing). This is partially due to bullet spread, as even standing still remains variance in where precisely the bullet will travel. This is only not the case with the scoped in Marshall or Operator.

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https://i.redd.it/l2oao9soxgq61.gif

As well as this, the existence of outlier values to my main testing is definitely strange and leads me to forming the conclusions shared above that there exists a small range where a different formula is applied.

If you’re interested in seeing the full video I made on this with my additional footage, it is on my YouTube here: https://youtu.be/NG4_uCWCV10

This exploration opened up more questions than expected, but I do understand the system more than at the start of these experiments. I’d still like to continue to learn more, so if you have any questions about my testing, suggestions, theories, or additional things I should follow up on, I’d welcome them.

Cheers