PC Best weapon with silencer?

Crater Creator

Crater Creator

Community Moderator
I'm pretty deep into my game now, and I have most firearms at a decent quality level.  I'm shifting from a strength-heavy build to a more agility/stealth-heavy one.  The bow weapons and melee weapons are great, but I'd like to use a firearm with a silencer* more, if for no better reason than it fits the cool spy guy role play. :spy:  Phtup phtup!

So which firearm works best with a silencer in your experience?  Where's the best tradeoff between damage and stealth?  For instance, the Desert Vulture is the 'best pistol,' but it still seems awfully noisy with a silencer.  Are you having better luck one-shotting sleepers with something unexpected or crazy, like a silenced Blunderbuss?

* The game takes place in a universe where there are "silencers" and not "supressors", so don't start with me.  :fish:

 
None really, the silencer mod really doesn't do much in vanilla at all due to poor values set by the devs. About the only weapon its somewhat functional on is the pistol, everything else it doesn't make much of a diff if you have a silencer or not.

 
The new Sniper rifle. I got a level 6 in one of my game that's at 127 damage, and i think i only have Perception and Dead Eye to level 2. So you can imagine with high level perks how insane this gets to be.

And contrary to previous comments, silencers do make a difference. Sure, it produces a "snap" sound that can alert another zombie but only if its considerably close to you. The noise range is definitely reduced by a decent margin. Many times ive been able to pop sleeping Zs in a POI without waking up the others.

 
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The SMG5 with Silencer still get´s you screamers. Not yet sure about the desert vulture, need to get one to test that. So far only the pistol and the sniper/marksman don´t wake up everyone in a room.

 
Kyonshi said:
The new Sniper rifle. I got a level 6 in one of my game that's at 127 damage, and i think i only have Perception and Dead Eye to level 2. So you can imagine with high level perks how insane this gets to be.

And contrary to previous comments, silencers does make a difference. Sure, it does produces a "snap" sound that can alert another zombie but only if its considerably close to you. The noise range is definitely reduced by a decent margin. Many times ive been able to pop sleeping Zs in a POI without waking up the others.
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I 100% agree with this, I use to use on an SMG, but in most cases, it's not a one shot kill. With the Marksman snd Sniper rifles, most, if not all Zeds, are a one shot kill with a head shot. I use stealth play pretty much all the time, and I can tell you, if there are no close zombies near you or target when you fire the the rifles with the suppressor attached, they will not hear it. As I enter an area, I work near targets first and move out from, there, if there is a cluster near each other, I save that for last as they probably will hear the shot near them.

 
seagas said:
I 100% agree with this, I use to use on an SMG, but in most cases, it's not a one shot kill. With the Marksman snd Sniper rifles, most, if not all Zeds, are a one shot kill with a head shot. I use stealth play pretty much all the time, and I can tell you, if there are no close zombies near you or target when you fire the the rifles with the suppressor attached, they will not hear it. As I enter an area, I work near targets first and move out from, there, if there is a cluster near each other, I save that for last as they probably will hear the shot near them.
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According to TFP sounds always emanate from the player not the impact location.

 
I use it on the SMG, pistol, and the older sniper rifle. Need to find a new one. I use it on the SMG so it looks like my MP5, whether it works or not. Oh, and from real-world use, you do not run standard ammo in a suppressed weapon. You can, but you are supposed to run ammo designed for being quiet. This is known as subsonic ammo. Using regular (supersonic) ammo will ruin a suppressor.

Now let's add a whole bunch of new subsonic ammo into the game! Kidding, seriously.

 
seagas said:
Well maybe they are woken up by the sound of zombie dieing? 
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Never have i seen a zombie getting woken up by another one dying. You can observe this when killing a zombie in stealth mode with a bow and arrow, for instance, which is one of the most silent complex projectile weapon in the game, while there's other sleepers visible around. Kill a Spider Zombie and you'll hear its horrible screeching when it dies. That would be enough to awaken a whole city but it doesnt alert any other zombies.

 
seagas said:
Well maybe they are woken up by the sound of zombie dieing? 
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Since there is a random factor involved it is difficult to find exact causes. I often shoot multiple zombies standing side by side (though generally with a bow), often including the wood panel they directly stand behind, and they don't wake up.

Performance-strapped as the game is I doubt they simulate zombies dying sounds. If I remember TFPs statement correctly, then  "only the player" excludes zombies as well as inanimate objects

 
I use SMG silenced with drum mag and Semi Trigger.  It one shots most things, but not glowey fatties, glowey cops, glowey wights, glowey bikers, or glowey soldiers.  Those get the silenced .44 Desert Vulture.

One (stupid) thing to keep in mind.  Buddy of mine recently did some testing, and found out that From the Shadows actually reduces noise from fired weapons now.  In fact, its so good that firing a shotgun without a silencer but fully spec'd into FTS is actually quieter than a silenced shotgun without FTS.  It doesn't make sense, but that's the mechanic now.

I can say I run 3-4 FTS, and with my silenced SMG, things don't wake up unless i'm within 2-3 blocks from a single shot.  Repeated shots can.  And things don't wake up from silenced .44 Desert Vulture unless you're within about 8-10 blocks.

 
The_Great_Sephiroth said:
I use it on the SMG, pistol, and the older sniper rifle. Need to find a new one. I use it on the SMG so it looks like my MP5, whether it works or not. Oh, and from real-world use, you do not run standard ammo in a suppressed weapon. You can, but you are supposed to run ammo designed for being quiet. This is known as subsonic ammo. Using regular (supersonic) ammo will ruin a suppressor.

Now let's add a whole bunch of new subsonic ammo into the game! Kidding, seriously.
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The game kinda already does that as using a silencer automatically lowers your damage unless you have all the Urban Combat books. 

As for all noise is emitted form the player that also includes any cabinet doors that you shoot off and the sound of any grenades that you throw. Since the game always treats it as if it occurred right at the players exact location including the sound of explosions. For example seeing a car in the distance and unloading your gun into it until it explodes will be treated as if you were standing in the car when it exploded regardless of how far away you were from it.

Now as for waking zombies in my experience the way noise works is like a light map. When you makes a noise it is as if you turned on a light of a different brightness for each sound type and said light diminishes for each block it travels while ignoring any blocks in its way. Now Zombies are set to look for certain intensity ranges and when their threshold is exceeded they wake up.

In other words say you make a noise and it emits at level ten and reduces by one for every block so that one block out it is a 9. Now lets say zombies are looking for any value over 4 so any zombie with in 7 blocks of you in any direction will wake up. However lets say your in stealth so that same noise now will only emit at level 6 and as a result only zombies 3 blocks from you will wake up.

Naturally we do not know the exact values at play and it would make sense for them to vary the numbers a bit by using random numbers with in ranges to add a bit of randomness.

 
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   Stealth with pistol silenced takes out most with headshot. People forget that shooting then moving is enough to lose activated zs at times (in stealth). cops etc take a few shots but no real problem. Overly aggressive vulture packs are the worst thing atm.

 
I just remembered the wondrous case of small stones. You can throw them into some corner and the zombies will go there. Now the questions are:

1) Does the sound still emanate from you for waking up detection? I.e. if they are still sleeping, will they wake up if you throw a small stone at the wall behind them or is it still treated as coming from you? In the latter case sound volume would be calculated from your position but sound location would be the actual location the stone hits the wall.

2) Whatever the case, are there other items that are treated like small stones? Hand grenades would be an obvious candidate.

 
Thanks for the responses, everyone.  I have a level 5 sniper rifle that does 100 damage and holds 12 rounds now, so I plan to try the silencer on that next.

 
The best weapon is the one you enjoy using the most. For me it has always been the SMG with a scope, silencer, and drum magazine.

 
Okay, I did some comparison tests to see how things work out.  I wore military stealth boots, ghillie pants, a ghillie shirt, and a ghillie hood.  I had "From the Shadows" level 3.  In the middle of the night, I crouched in my base with the lights off and fired a shot at a distant target with each silenced weapon after my stealth meter had minimized to 2.  Quality level and ammo type didn't matter.  Yes, I could've checked the xml, but this was more fun.  These were my stealth values.

  • Pistol: 20
  • SMG: 21
  • Compound bow: 29 (7 if it never hits anything)
  • Compound crossbow: 36 (11 if it never hits anything)
  • Desert Vulture: 38
  • Double-barreled shotgun: 38
  • Pump shotgun: 38
  • Auto shotgun: 38
  • Marksman rifle: 47
  • Sniper rifle: 47
  • Tactical assault rifle: 54
  • M60 machine gun: 58
Other weapons were either not compatible with silencers, or I didn't have them.  Long story short, if you want to use a silencer and be as quiet as possible, use a 9mm weapon.  The bow/crossbow revealed another factor: the impact can be louder than the report.  Shooting the Desert Vulture at a faraway satellite dish topped out at 38, but shooting it at nearby adobe or wood raised the stealth meter to 44, and shooting it at a nearby iron reinforced wooden door raised it to 50.  I would hope shooting a zombie is a 'soft' impact that doesn't appreciably raise the meter, but I'll have to test that too.

 
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