The Dubious Science of COD Ghosts

[Lundmunchkins]

As you all know, Call of Duty: Ghosts is a first-person shooter which mostly takes place on Earth. Mostly. There is a level IN SPACE that has got me face-palming because of the scientific inaccuracies. In one of the 1st levels, you are on a military Kinetic Bombardment Space Station, but it gets hijacked by the enemy, so you and a squad of Space Soldiers have to kill them all. How in the world do these Astro-Soldiers not get thrown back by the gunfire? In real life, the gunshots would throw back these soldiers because of Newton's Laws, however in this game you can shoot and not get thrown off-course. Also, wouldn't NASA or the Air Force have noticed an enemy spacecraft rendezvousing with this station? We all know that rendezvous is a tedious and slow task, but these enemy Space-Soldiers should have been caught before they made it to orbit. They should have been tracked down by the LEO Debris Trackers. And finally, this isn't a rant BTW, I just want to point out these hilarious problems with this particular game.

[dharak1]

Hmmmm... I played the campaign a few days ago and another thing I noticed is how Odin deorbits by what appears to be RCS. It also reenters in a few seconds.

[Lundmunchkins]

Yeah, they focused more on action then actual space physics, also I noticed (because of a particular film) film and video game producers are blowing stuff in space (in their products) ALOT

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Well, it's a first person shooter. People don't play it for it's realistic depiction of real life... The moment you add that you loose your market to another FPS. Google around and you'll find people complaining that they die from one shot.

This reminds me of another game, I think it was ARMA, where you can jump out of a fighter plane, shot your rocket launcher at an enemy plane, and fall back down to the cockpit of the plane you jumped off. All in mid air!

Those games don't aim to be realistic, they aim to be fun to play. What is fun? Depends on the person and one's particular view of the game. Of course if they would advertise it as "the most realistic modern combat simulator" then I have a problem with that.

[rpayne88]

I haven't played ghosts yet, but please explain the health systems in COD games. I mean, take Modern Warfare for example. How is it you can survive an RPG hitting the wall three feet from you, yet die after regaining consciousness after a nuclear detonation and helicopter crash? By COD's logic, you should have only lost consciousness after dieing.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

-snip-

This reminds me of another game, I think it was ARMA, where you can jump out of a fighter plane, shot your rocket launcher at an enemy plane, and fall back down to the cockpit of the plane you jumped off. All in mid air!

-snip-

Sorry, but I just wanted to say that ARMA is the closet to mil-sim you can get within a 60$ budget, it is Battlefield you are thinking of.

ARMA is developed by people that make milsims for the US ARMY

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Sorry, but I just wanted to say that ARMA is the closet to mil-sim you can get within a 60$ budget, it is Battlefield you are thinking of.

ARMA is developed by people that make milsims for the US ARMY

Yeah, you're right, I mixed the franchises.

[Decent Weasel]

Reminds me of Modern Warfare 2 where an SLBM launched from the Pacific coast of Russia flies clear around the world to approach DC, engines burning, from the east. Even if the stupid things had remotely that kind of range, which they don't, they wouldn't fly the long way, and they certainly wouldn't have any fuel left by the time they were in terminal phase. The resulting explosion physically obliterates the ISS, orbiting over the Gulf of Mexico. Nukes don't have remotely that big of a blast radius, even in atmosphere!

I facepalmed so hard I nearly got a nosebleed.

[Winter Man]

You'd gain about 9m/s every shot fired if I did the calcs right.

edit: although saying that, if they were shouldering the rifle correctly they'd be sent into a hilarious spin.

Also

milsims for the US ARMY

Army isn't an acronym. /pedantry

[Ralathon]

You'd gain about 9m/s every shot fired if I did the calcs right.

edit: although saying that, if they were shouldering the rifle correctly they'd be sent into a hilarious spin.

Also

Army isn't an acronym. /pedantry

Are you sure you did those maths correct? The muzzle velocity for a standard M16 rifle is about 1km/s and a bullet weighs 5 grams. If we assume the soldiers wear some lightweight spacesuit their total mass is probably around 150kg. So that gives us a dV per shot of:

dV = 1000*0.005/150 = 0.0333... Or slightly more than 3 cm per second. Firing a full cartridge of 20 bullets only gives you about 0.7m/s. I don't know the angular momentum of a unladen astronaut, but I assume he'd still spin pretty rapidly though.

[Winter Man]

Are you sure you did those maths correct?

Probably not. I was using E=1/2m.v^2 and sqrt(E/0.5m)=v, assuming 4 grams at 1200m/s and a 70kg person. E=2880J, sqrt(2880/35) ~= 9m/s. Of course, that's energy not momentum isn't it. Yours is more likely right.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Winter Man

[Klingon Admiral]

The question that comes to my mind is why this stupid orbital bombardement station is manned at all. Pointing at something and shooting isn't so complex that a simple drone couldn't do it.

[meve12]

Security, to prevent hijacking/malfunctions resulting in firing? (Incidentally, why nuclear silos are manned.) Remote Marine deployments via droppods, ODST style?

[Captain Sierra]

I'd like to add another flaw being overlooked. I don't believe bullets are airtight. Black powder is not self oxidizing. Two and Two are not being put together. No air, no oxidant, no boom. long and short of it: GUNS DON'T WORK IN SPACE

lol CoD.

[Sickle]

I can remember asking the same thing about 007 Nightfire, Exact same thing occurs, however you have a laser, so thats a bit more logical.

But you can't argue with Bond.

[deadshot462]

I've seen the sequence on YouTube and it's pretty much a cutscene with a few player-made gunshots. The worst thing was watching a station re-enter with very little dV from a stable orbit. It would have been cooler to have the attack happen on the Moon's surface or Mars's surface.

[DaveofDefeat]

I'd like to add another flaw being overlooked. I don't believe bullets are airtight. Black powder is not self oxidizing. Two and Two are not being put together. No air, no oxidant, no boom. long and short of it: GUNS DON'T WORK IN SPACE

lol CoD.

Gunpowder has its own oxidizer, guns work even better in space.

[Skyler4856]

But why would they fire straight down? Why wouldn't they fire they fire the rods retrograde as opposed to straight down?

[deadshot462]

But why would they fire straight down? Why wouldn't they fire they fire the rods retrograde as opposed to straight down?

I imagine the general COD audience wouldn't understand why something is shot sideways instead of towards the planet, so "creative license" was employed here.

[XIRA]

haha, imagine this mission being realistic. first players are put into a shooting sequence that ends in sickness and players stopping the game because they get send into a uncontrollable spin. 2 minutes later you see the cannon shooting retrograde, leaving about 99% of all players confused because ''it doesn't look like it's going to hit earth''. now the best part: the player gets to sit in front of his/her screen enjoying the view for about 1-2 hours while the station slowly de-orbits itself using rcs.

i hope i made my point clear. it's an arcade fps guys, not an advanced space simulator, and it shouldn't be

[Ralathon]

I imagine the general COD audience wouldn't understand why something is shot sideways instead of towards the planet, so "creative license" was employed here.

If you shoot it at the planet fast enough I'm sure it'll hit it. Burning radial adjusts your eccentricity, burn enough and your Pe will fall below the surface. A few thousand dV should do the job from LEO. It's grossly inefficient, but your bullet will hit the surface with more energy.

[stallion x1]

Actually the reason for shooting the ODIN straight down is because although it requires a greater D/V it increases the impact speed of the projectile meaning it goes from orbit to target quicker.So for once COD got its science right and to be honest all the had to do was copy the rods from the gods idea that someone had as it basically identical to ODIN.

[MC.STEEL]

there is a game theory episode about it and i can say that the guns you use to shoot have a pathetic trust to weight ratio so its not that important

[ZeroTheAstronaut]

there is a game theory episode about it and i can say that the guns you use to shoot have a pathetic trust to weight ratio so its not that important

Uh...The AK-47 Has a TWR around two..

http://what-if.xkcd.com/21/

[Skyrunner27]

Alternatively they could be wearing a very heavy EVA suit so it pushes them back less.