WEAPON MECHANICS Guide for America's Army: Proving Grounds [2021 Update]

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Welcome! This is a comprehensive look at most of the core weapon mechanics in America's Army: Proving Grounds. If you've ever wanted to get into the nitty-gritty details of how everything works, this is the place to look. We'll cover every aspect of weapon handling from the moment you spawn in to the moment your bullet lands.


1. Where you hit matters: Damage zones
Getting hit in the head hurts much more than getting shot in the leg. We'll break down just how much more.

2. Bleeding out: How bleed damage works
Everything deals a combination of "instant" damage and "bleed" damage. We'll cover the difference and why bandaging up is a good idea.

3. Long range 101: Bullet drop and leading targets
Which aspects of bullet ballistics are modeled in the game? How much do bullets drop? Where should you aim?

4. Long range 201: Damage falloff (or, why that guy isn't dead already)
Bullets lose energy over distance. How does the game handle this? What does it mean for gameplay and weapon balance?

5. Weapon Handling Basics: Accuracy, Sway, and Recoil, low health penalties, stamina: the out-of-breath penalties
Practically every action you take can tie in to how your weapon handles. Are you standing, crouching, or prone? Have you been running recently and need to catch your breath? How much damage have you taken? It all plays a role.

6. Low health and stamina penalties
See, how having a low health can affect you, and how running makes your character tired over time.

7. Bullet penetration and shots through walls
Only some walls are bulletproof and some guns put bullets through them better than others. Learn how the game handles this very important mechanic.

8. Suppression effects
Screen blur and you: what does it do?

9. The Shotgun
The shotgun behaves slightly differently. This covers how.

10. ADS Movement Speed
You move more slowly while scoped in. Find out how much.

11. Weapon Drop & Pick-up
Learn how the inventory system works.

12. Other stats: Reload time, Rate of Fire and more
See how weapons compare in the time to reload, lead output and time to target.

13. The M67 Fragmentation Grenade
See how close you can go before you're toast. Hint: You'll need a looooong stick for your marshmallows!

14. A little goodie on top: weapon heat effects
Ever noticed that your M4 and M16 will start to glow when you fire them for longer? No? Well neither did I, but it's a thing 😆

For different reasons, I have decided not to create this article with the steam guide system, mainly because this is an absolute pain in the behind. The formatting options here are very limited and cumbersome to use.

This is why I decided to go with an app called Notion, which offers lots of practical formatting and layouting options, and also enables me to embed interactive diagrams which I can't do here. All of that makes reading the article a lot more enjoyable I think :)

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So here you can find the link to the full WEAPON MECHANICS Guide for America's Army: Proving Grounds[aapg.notion.site] (link to an external website)

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You will have to click on "continue to external site" on the usual steam notice when clicking on external links, or use a URL safety checker website (as you should always do ;D) if you want to be cautious...

This weapon mechanics guide was originally made by BCPull on steam and was last updated by him on the 6th of September 2016. This is why I saw the opportunity to retest some of the info from back then to see if things have changed and to update it. Most of the texts are written by him and the community can be thankful to have had such an insightful person take so much time out of their day!

Sadly, I am not as proficient as he was and cannot actually pull any of this info from the game files. The updated info has therefore been tested "by hand" through many hours of manual tests.

For this, I also wanna say a huge thanks to the lovely Unic0rnen for having the patience to endure all these tests. As a compensation, she got to shoot me a few dozen times :D

A thank you also goes out to @ANDR!C0 on the AA discord for supplying the weapon config files, which allowed me to update this article with the actual values added in version 2 of this article.

For version 3 of this article, a member of the AGS development team was willing to provide feedback and valuable input on this guide to further improve it. I'm honored by the offer to help me out with their knowledge and extremely grateful for this commitment to the community! Thank you!

Have fun reading!
motivated2die (motivated#5559 on Discord)

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