Pepper-ball Gun

The **Pepper-ball Gun** is a primary, non-lethal weapon introduced in SWAT 4. It fires OC-balls ejected by compressed carbon dioxide at relatively high speeds.

## In-Game Description

*"The Pepper-ball gun is based on technology originally designed for recreational paintball.  Compressed Carbon Dioxide ejects the ammunition at relatively high velocities.  The Pepper-ball gun allows officers to quickly deploy OC at specific targets, in more easily controlled quantities, and at significantly longer ranges than a grenade or standard pepper spray.  With the large ammunition hopper this weapon never needs to be reloaded under normal operating conditions."*

## General Usage

The Pepper-ball gun is mostly used as a non-lethal option alongside the Less Lethal Shotgun in combat situations. As a non-lethal weapon, its can be used on targets without adhering to the rules of lethal engagement since it is incapable of causing death or incapacitation. When compared with the Less Lethal Shotgun, it has an incredible rate of fire and whopping 200 rounds within its magazine, thus it is very often used during speed runs. Unlike the Less Lethal Shotgun, however, some experience is required to effectively use the Pepper-ball gun since it possesses three major drawbacks - the weapon is incapable of stacking morale modifers upon mutiple strikes, it also has no impacts when used under the cover of CS Gas, and finally it has no effects against suspects equipped with gas masks.

## Effect

Once a pepper ball impacts a surface, a gas cloud with a radius of 50 units (1 meter/3.25 feet) is released, which will dissipate after 2 seconds. Once a target inhales the gas payload, the target will start coughing for 10 seconds with their morale value subtracted by 0.35. The target is also temporarily incapable of doing anything else except cough uncontrollably and remark on their suffering. Given how morale damage is calculated for gas weapons, multiple pepper-ball strikes or using pepper-ball with CS Gas inhalation will not increase morale modifiers beyond 0.35 when lowering a target's morale, thus a non-gas type backup weapon is needed in case the target refuses to surrender.

Counter-intuitively, the pepper-ball is not counted as the same type of attack as pepper spray for the purpose of morale reduction calculation, despite the in-game description stating they are using the same chemical agent. This means it is possible to stack pepper spray's morale modifier with pepper-ball's morale modifier when trying to subdue targets.

However, when a target is equipped with a gas mask in single player mode, the effect of this weapon is completely nullified. In multiplayer, any player equiped with the gas mask will have the pepper-ball gun's effect reduced by 80%.

## Changes in Elite Force

In SWAT: Elite Force, the effect of the Pepper-ball gun has been significantly nerfed. The gas cloud's radius has been cut by half, while unprotected suspects now have a 20% chance not being affect by the gas cloud. The coughing duration has also been reduced to 5 seconds with the morale reduction value cut to 0.2. As a compensation it can now be equipped as a secondary weapon.

 Marksman Rifles