Zenith CA-40

The Zenith CA-40 is a weapon in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

Overview
The Zenith CA-40 is a derivative of the Zenith pistol. It is a modern, fully ambidextrous and ergonomic sidearm with a very modular design, allowing it to accept several tactical modifications. The magazine holds only 15 rounds by default and it fires rather slowly, but both capacity and rate of fire can be increased. The Zenith features orange tritium-illuminated iron sights, arguably the second best iron sights in the game.

This pistol, and ammunition for it, are extremely common. Everybody from elite hackers to highly paid security forces use it. While it's not all that dangerous a weapon, a group of angry people armed with pistols is, as Adam by default dies after 6 shots from this weapon.

While it's classed as a prog weapon, the options available mean that a fully, or almost fully, upgraded pistol can easily be your main gun. Unlike other weapons with silencers, the damage subtraction is only 5, which on paper makes this thing as deadly as a silenced combat rifle. In single shot, it has great handling, which is a hallmark of deus ex pistols. In full auto, it pulls hard to the left, and chews through a whole 38 round magazine in about a second and a half. Since ammo's so common, people who primarily use the machine pistol are likely to swap for an automatic pistol for missions or days when 9mm just isn't available in great quantities.

The EMP ammo is more of a gimmick for this thing. If you're using it heavily, you have it fully upgraded, and don't really care about stunning robots or exo-suits, and will instead melt them with the hundreds of 10mm bullets you'll keep in your stash and on you person. I would still have a full 38 magazine of EMP rounds loaded, just in case, but excess ammo should be sold or recycled.

While we're on the subject of damage, the 10mm kills fleshy, unarmored characters very quickly. Unupgraded, two leg shots are enough to put down Mikael's bodyguard, and only Mikael himself was tough enough to require three leg shots. Unfortunately, most of the actual enemies, as well as law enforcement, don't walk around in trenchcoats, but wear armor of some description. Unupgraded, it takes 12 body shots to kill a black armor police man at point black. At about 25 meters, it took all 15.. Metro cops are far less durable, and can only withstand 3 or 4 shots to the groin or stomach, or two to the less armored parts on their back. Tars' bodyguards, the weakest characters in the game, die to a single bodyshot, and a Dvali usually takes 2 shots to the chest, but sometimes 3. I say aim for the belly or crotch, and put them down in 1 or 2, but their usage of cover makes that a difficult proposition, so it's probably easier to score some headshots. Anything non-flesh takes a great deal less damage from this weapon, but if yoi have the ammo, there's nothing stopping you shooting robots, exo-suits, and turrets to bits anyway.

Like pretty much every other weapon in the game, the pistol supports a laser sight which is incredibly helpful if you're using the automatic fire mode, but due to the great handling, you don't really need it if you're using the pistol solely for aimed semi-auto shots. What this translates to, in game terms, is that if you run out of ammo for your baby darling modded battle rifle, you can grab the closest Zenith, and proceed to place precision headshots, without mods, or any worry.

Do keep in mind that automatic fire drains your ammunition very quickly. Not quite as fast as the machine pistol, but close enough, and 10mm bullets are much more expensive to buy. Fully upgraded, and with some decent fire control, it's very easy to break a cop's helmet with the first two shots on automatic, then score a killing headshot with the third. The silencer, as previously mentioned, doesn't really have much of an effect on your actual damage, and it's always nice to see cops and baddies run to the aid of guys you put 76 rounds into, and they're not even aware you're there. Beware the puny max range of 35 meters, though, At least the damage drop up is small, until you're almost at 35. This short range is also why the silencer isn't that good an idea. For the 10mm pistol, universally in my tests, the silencer simply adds another body shot before the target's down, and since you're usually so close, it's probably smarter to converse ammo than the 'stealthy,' when all the friends of the guy you just killed march on his last known location.

Another note on autofire, it should be your primary mode if you unlock it. While it's not as controllable as the machine pistol, with some practice, you find that you can easily do two taps to erase cameras, triple taps to kill cops, and develop the ability to fire in bursts of roughly 12 rounds against harder targets (shadow ops, exo-suits, robots, turrets), hitting with most, assessing, then repeating as necessary. The dry reload on the pistol is rather obnoxious, so make sure you reload when you're low, not empty, or you'll find yourself looking at the game over screen a lot. Autofire pistol style is also the build that benefits the most from investing in cyber weapon affinity. Reloading in less than half a second, no perceived recoil if you're crouched and iron sighted, great accuracy on the move, and minimal bloom for your loads and loads of bullets.

However, getting a pistol like this is very expensive in crafting material. As a further bonus, autofire from the pistol is one of few things in the game that causes terror among your enemies. One can easily observe this on a new game +. Get a pistol, some magazines, upgrade to auto, and open fire on the doorman, his backup, and the guys standing outside. The survivors will retreat, and if you sneak close, you'll hear the Dvali say things like 'I'm not going out there,' and 'what's this guy's problem.' Also the ever relevant 'I'm not scared of bullets, I'm scared of that many bullets.'

Elite Edition 10mm Pistol

 * Included as part of the Intruder Gear DLC, available as a free download.
 * A modified version with slightly slower fire rate optimized for 3-round-burst operation.
 * The Elite Edition deals more damage to hard targets (robots, cars, armored components, cameras, doors, destructibles) than its regular counterpart, despite the damage indicated in the in-game stats view. It takes only a single bullet from the silenced elite pistol to destroy cameras.
 * The Elite Edition pistol has a maximum range of 40 meters, slightly more than that of the regular version.
 * It's possible to attain a very high rate of fire by pulsing the attack button when burst fire is selected, but the smaller magazine, and significantly longer reload time, make this more a novelty than an effective strategy.

Tips

 * The standard CA-40 burns through the player's ammo stock at an alarming rate when modified to fire automatically. If possible, the Elite Edition should be used instead if the player favors the Zenith as its 3-round-burst along with slower rate of fire can help with ammo conservation. Don't underestimate the damage increase, either. Blowing up cameras in one shot with the silencer on, is a powerful ability, as is breaking police helmets in two bullets, rather than the three the normal version requires.
 * Every armed personnel in the game possess an unlimited supply of CA-40s that can be witnessed by repeatedly taking down an enemy and looting his weapon, then letting another wake him up. Said enemy will always produce a new pistol out of thin air if woken up without a weapon, which can be exploited with a bit of management to farm for pistol ammunition and/or dismantling fodder if the player has the Micro-Assembler augmentation.

Trivia

 * The CA-40 retains much of the old Zenith's aesthetics, but now features a squared backstrap with an internal hammer system akin to pistols that enables it to use firing mode modifications.
 * The new Zenith model is referred to as the "CA-40" by its receiver branding and the case studies of the ZAP derivative, while the in-game description identifies it as the "CA-4".