Summary
Fixes pistols under ACE Medical: real wounds and bleeding, one fewer stomach hit for 9mm and .45 ball, rifle-like finishing of downed players. Rifles and the rest of ACE are unchanged.
Description
Sidearms that actually put people down, on servers running ACE Medical.
THE PROBLEM
ACE Medical Hitzones removes the shared health pool. You die when a vital body part is destroyed or when you bleed out. A full-power rifle round destroys a stomach in one or two hits and a 5.45 needs three, but most pistol rounds need four or five. Worse, a single pistol hit almost never causes a wound. People get knocked out, there is nothing to bleed from, and a minute later they get back up and shoot you. Under ACE, a pistol is a stun gun.
WHAT THIS CHANGES (pistol-caliber rounds only)
- Stomach hits remove 30% more HP for rounds that need 4 or more stomach hits. Standard 9x19 ball and .45 now kill in 3 stomach hits instead of 4, the same as a 5.45 rifle. Rounds that already kill in 3 or fewer get no stomach bonus, so no pistol out-kills a rifle.
- Chest and stomach hits on a downed player, once ACE Second Chance has run out, remove 60% more HP. Finishing someone takes about as many rounds as a rifle.
- A hit that takes 10 HP or more off the chest or stomach starts a normal ACE bleed. Hips, arms and legs keep ACE's normal wound rule, the same as rifles, so a pistol or SMG burst bleeds from the same body parts a rifle burst does, just a little slower.
Covered: vanilla 9x19 and 9x18, plus 9x19, 9x18, .45 ACP and 7.62x25 from popular weapon packs (43 rounds, each one measured and sorted). Hot loads such as hollow points, 7.62x25 and the Chungus and ARMA-RY .45 get the bleed and downed rules but no stomach bonus. PDW rounds (4.6x30, 5.7x28) are listed but switched off.
WHAT IT LEAVES ALONE
- Every round that isn't on the list: rifles, machine guns, grenades, explosives, melee.
- Armor. Vests still stop pistol rounds; the bonus is applied after armor.
- Knockout and pain. They come from the original hit, so pistols don't knock people out any sooner than under plain ACE.
- ACE's medical rules: heart and head one-shots, femoral and neck bleeds, cardiac arrest, Second Chance, collapsed lungs. One exception: a chest hit on a downed player gets the downed bonus before ACE rolls for a collapsed lung, like a rifle hit.
- Damage tracking and kill credit. The bonus is part of the hit itself, so kill feeds, damage logs and spectator damage reports show the real damage, and the shooter gets the kill.
- ACE's bleeding settings. Pistol bleeds are normal ACE bleeds, so the bleeding rate scale and maximum total bleeding rate apply.
- Treatment. Pistol wounds are normal ACE wounds and every ACE item works on them.
REQUIREMENTS
ACE Medical Hitzones Dev and ACE Medical Core Dev (which bring in ACE Core Dev).
FOR SERVER ADMINS
Add the mod next to your ACE mods. All damage logic runs on the server. The first torso hit on the server writes one line to the script log so you can confirm it is running:
[PistolLethality] Loaded 3 groups (2 enabled), 51 projectile prefabs. Master switch: 1
Every number lives in one config file, including a per-group switch for hip bleeds. To change them, make a small addon that depends on this one and override the config.
Built for COALITION events and runs alongside the COALITION Reforger Framework, but any ACE Medical server can use it.
Source, full documentation and issue tracker: https://github.com/SyykoNT/Pistol-Lethality
Made by SyykoNT. Medical system by the ACE team. MIT licensed.
License
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2026 SyykoNT
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.