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Template:Doom 3 weapon also in

This article is about the Doom pistol. You may be looking for the HacX Pistol.
MAP01

The pistol in the initial view on entering MAP01: Entryway.

The pistol is the player's default weapon, and fires bullets. Each player enters the game with a pistol, fifty bullets, and his fists, with the pistol selected as the active weapon. It uses the same ammunition as the chaingun. None of the monsters carry a pistol, though the trooper appears to be armed with an assault rifle that fires pistol bullets.

Combat characteristics

The pistol fires individual bullets, each inflicting 5-15 points of damage. If the player holds the fire button down, the marine fires the pistol repeatedly. As with the chaingun, the initial shot accurately strikes the object in the center of the screen, but if the trigger is held down, subsequent shots have a dispersal (standard deviation around 2°, to a maximum of ±5.5°).

Tactical analysis

The pistol is an extremely weak weapon, doing damage at a rate barely 10% greater than the fists and generally should not be used if any better weapon is available. However, if the player is low on shotgun shells and doesn't have the chaingun in his possession, the pistol can be used to take down individual or small groups of zombies or imps and save shells for pinkies or stronger enemies that may be encountered later. This situation is most commonly suffered at the first levels of an episode or megawad especially on Ultra-Violence difficulty when the player is looking desperately for the shotgun, but still has to face great quantities of monsters.

The pistol is capable of 100% accurate fire if the player carefully taps the fire button slightly after the first shot rather than hold it down. It's also the most economical way to shoot hitscan-activated switches, because unlike the chaingun, the pistol only fires one bullet per cycle rather than two (however when playing the original executable, the player may have to use the Super Shotgun as it is the only weapon with vertical spread to hit switches that may be on a higher level than the one the player is currently on).

Notes

File:Pistolmanual.png

An unusued sprite for the Pistol in the manuals.

Pistol64 stagingarea

The pistol from Doom 64, at the start of MAP01: Staging Area

  • Because neither players nor monsters can drop a pistol, it is the only weapon (apart from the fists) that does not have a "pickup" sprite. An icon for the pistol can be seen in the Doom Collector's Edition and Final Doom instruction manuals, but this graphic does not appear in the game.
  • The Doom 64 pistol has a new look. The gun is narrower, making it look more like a Desert Eagle. For all intents and purposes the player doesn't need to use the pistol in a combat setting, as a shotgun sits in the first room of MAP01: Staging Area not far from the starting area.
  • In the Saturn port, the pistol fires much faster than in other ports.
  • Interestingly, the pistol (along with the fist) is used left-handed, while the shotgun and chainsaw are wielded right-handed.

Data

Pistol data
Weapon number 2
Damage 5-15
Included ammo 50 (at player spawn time)
Max ammo 200 (400 with backpack)
Ammo type Bullets
Shot type Hitscan
Shots per minute 150.0
Sound DSPISTOL
Appears in Shareware Doom
Registered Doom
Ultimate Doom
Doom II/Final Doom
Sprite PISG (wielded)
PISF (firing)
PUFF (impact, miss)
BLUD (impact, hit)
BulletHistogram

Damage done by a single bullet

Shots needed to kill1,2 Mean Standard
deviation
Min Max
Barrel 2.30 0.50 2 4
Trooper 2.30 0.50 2 4
Sergeant 3.24 0.72 2 5
Wolfenstein SS 5.17 0.88 4 8
Imp 6.11 0.90 4 9
Chaingunner 7.09 1.01 5 10
Lost Soul 9.98 1.19 7 14
Commander Keen 9.98 1.19 7 14
Demon 14.80 1.40 11 20
Spectre 14.80 1.40 11 20
Boss Brain3 24.40 1.44 20 28
Revenant 29.23 1.43 25 32
Cacodemon 39.02 1.98 35 44
Pain Elemental 39.02 1.98 35 44
Hell Knight 48.61 2.36 42 55
Arachnotron 48.61 2.36 42 55
Mancubus 58.31 2.61 51 63
Arch-Vile 68.05 3.10 62 75
Baron of Hell 97.09 4.37 87 106
Spider Mastermind 290.61 12.57 265 313
Cyberdemon 387.37 16.72 355 414

  1. This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, and bullet dispersal are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
  2. The target must be close enough to compensate for the weapon's recoil.
  3. Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

See also

Template:Doom weapons

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