Silencer

A silencer, also known as a suppressor, is a barrel extension available to some weapons in the Counter-Strike series. The silencer is mainly used to reduce the amount of noise, flash intensity and removed tracers produced when firing a weapon on top of providing additional advantages at the cost of certain disadvantages.

Overview

The silencer appears on the following weapons:

The silencer comes with these weapons and require no additional funds.

On the Maverick M4A1 Carbine, M4A1-S, K&M .45 Tactical, and USP-S, they can be attached or detached from the weapons with the alternate fire button (MOUSE2 by default). In earlier games, the silencer is not attached onto the weapon by default. In Global Offensive, buying a weapon with an available suppressor will have the suppressor already attached to the weapon. Attaching and detaching the silencer costs time, especially for the M4A1-S.

As previously mentioned, the general advantage of suppressing a weapon is stealth as noise and flash intensity are reduced atop of having tracers removed.

Properties

Advantages

Lowers the weapon's noise, making it harder for enemies to detect the shooter's position.
Increases damage for M4A1.
Removes muzzle flash & tracers.
Decreases recoil.

Disadvantages

Increases damage falloff for the M4A1.
Lowers overall damage for the K&M .45 Tactical.
Increases recoil (USP only) and spread.
Exposes the user when attempting to hide in a corner as the barrel can poke out of it.

Tactics

In the GoldSrc games and Source, the silencers' attributes of increasing the M4A1's damage falloff, decreasing the K&M .45 Tactical's damage output, and reducing accuracy for both relegates the relevant weapons to close-ranged combat should the silencers be equipped.
In Global Offensive, keep the silencer on as it greatly increases the accuracy and reduces the bullet spread of the USP-S and M4A1-S. Removing the silencer will make these weapons less effective than their non-suppressed counterparts, the P2000 and M4A4.
The decreased noise and removal of muzzle flash gained from the silencers greatly help the user stay hidden when firing at enemies, but as the noise is not nullified entirely, players may still be able to pick up the silenced gunshots, more so when nearby. Additionally, the removed muzzle flash in Source games can help the player stay hidden in dark areas when against human players.
If you suspect a large group of enemies is nearby and are aware of your presence, you can throw flashbangs and smoke grenades and fire your silenced weapons.
- As flashbangs in 1.6 do not affect a player's hearing, it is crucial to act fast and disorientate enemies by firing at them.
Running, instead of walking, will reduce the effectiveness of the silencer as enemies may hear you. As such, it is still best to walk/crouch walk when entering enemy territory.
In the Deleted Scenes, enemies will still detect you if you use a weapon's suppressor. While the M4A1 silencer's close-range damage increase can still be useful, the silencer should not be used at all on the K&M .45 Tactical.
Be sure to attach the silencer during freeze time or before you enter into combat since the attachment process takes time and leaves the player vulnerable to attack from enemies.
Bots in Source will randomly attach the silencer, making them quite unpredictable on their approach with the weapon in question.

Bugs & Exploits

Prior to Counter-Strike: Source, it was possible to suppress and un-suppress weapons significantly faster by starting the process then immediately switching to another weapon and back to the target weapon. This was best done by pressing the previous weapon button (Q by default) twice after the process was started.
- A rare glitch may also occur when picking the weapon of a player killed while attempting to suppress/un-suppress the weapon in which the new owner would play both animations in an infinite loop without being able to use the weapon.

Trivia

Like in many other media, the silencers in the series is able to decrease the sound of gunfire to a great extent, almost making it quiet. In reality and contrary to popular belief, the silencer rather reduces the noise to around 160 db (equal to a Jet plane's engine noise) or 130 db to 140 db (equally as a Jackhammer or a chainsaw), much louder than the "pew" noises in the games.
Prior to Source, weapons always had the suppressor attached in third person, regardless of whether or not it was on the actual weapon.
Prior to Global Offensive, silencer attachment/detachment had no third person animations.
In games prior to Global Offensive, kill icons for weapons with detachable silencers always shows the silencer attached. In Global Offensive these weapons now have two kill icons that reflect whether or not the silencer was attached when the kill took place.

Behind the scenes

The Schmidt Machine Pistol is the first suppressed weapon of the series appearing as early as the first beta. The Maverick M4A1 Carbine and K&M .45 Tactical's suppressors were only added in the next beta but akin to the original weapon, they were nondetachable at first.
The TMP's icons in earlier versions of the Counter-Strike Beta always depicted with a silencer, that until the fifth version which removed the silencer from the HUD icons. Coincidentally, that was one patch before the suppressors for the Maverick M4A1 Carbine and K&M .45 Tactical became attachable. This suggests that the TMP was also intended to get that ability. The reason for the ability's omission is unknown.
The Global Offensive Beta's sound files featured unused suppressed firing sounds and suppressing/unsuppressing sounds for the M4A4. This suggests that the M4A4 either reused the M4A1's sound files or that the M4A4 itself was to have a suppressor.

External links

Silencer at Wikipedia

Template:Equipment