M1A Rifle in Build 42 — Damage, Weight, Range and Verdict

The Trade in One Line

The M1A is the complete rifle: 1.2–2 damage at a 40-tile max — top band, top reach — with a magazine feed that keeps it working through a group. Everything about it is the best the long columns offer except weight 4.5, the heaviest number in the worksheet, shared with only the JS-3T and the MSR7T. You pay the full gram price for a gun with no compromise in it.

What the Numbers Mean in Play Cross-Verified

• Damage 1.2 – 2. The rifle ceiling — only the shotgun family’s 2.2 band tops it, and it does so at a third of the reach. Against the M16’s 1 – 1.6 the M1A kills things with fewer trigger pulls.
• Max range 40 tiles. The worksheet’s longest column: triple the Shotgun, ten past the 30-tier. A ceiling rather than an envelope — the firearms guide covers real distance — but at 40 you engage the stragglers before they ever become a crowd problem.
• Weight 4.5. The set’s joint-heaviest carry. This is a vehicle gun or a base gun; the trek between the two is where the half-unit over the MSR788 stings.
• Condition 10. Uniform gun durability — a battle rifle does not get a better number than a snub revolver. Maintenance gates wear (skill leveling guide).
• Report. Deep and far-carrying — among the loudest long guns; every M1A shot audibly edits the population map around Louisville and the high-risk POIs.
• Feed. A real box magazine — between the bolt-action-tier rifles’ cycling and the M16’s bottomless appetite sits the M1A’s balance: sustained enough to hold a fence line, deliberate enough to make every shot placed.

When Not to Use It

• On foot with a light loadout. The MSR788 carries the same damage and reach at 4; the MSR7T Tactical Rifle matches this gun’s numbers at the same weight — if the half unit matters, it is a feed conversation first.
• For quiet work. Loud plus heaviest plus top band — nothing about the M1A is a stealth weapon; the Trapper Carbine is the low-drama long gun.
• When the fight is 12 tiles long anyway. The shotgun’s 1.5 – 2.2 ends doors faster than any rifle can.

How It Compares

The 1.2 – 2 / 40-tile club is three guns deep, and the dual-sourced columns separate them by exactly one thing: weight, with the MSR788 half a unit cheaper. The M1A’s case is the feed the club’s lighter member cannot match — see the MSR788 Rifle page for the trade argued both ways — while the L94 row shows what giving up ten tiles buys back in grams. Overall: weapon tier list.

Sources & Verification

Every printed figure on this page is agreed by two independent sources we can read today, matched by the in-game item ID Base.AssaultRifle2:

What this is not. Neither source is our own measurement — nobody fired this gun in a test sandbox for this page. The noise value and the magazine capacity exist only on the PZwiki side (pzfans has no comparable column), so they are described qualitatively above and never printed as numbers. Spawn locations are omitted for the same one-source reason. PZwiki stamps most firearm pages against builds older than 42.21, so treat this as 42.20-era agreement rather than 42.21-verified, and expect a patch note to move these numbers eventually.