Zenith CA-40

The Zenith CA-40 is a weapon in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The Zenith CA-40 is a derivative the Zenith pistol that appeared in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Overview
The Zenith CA-40 is a highly convenient weapon due to its small inventory size, readily available ammunition, and high degree of versatility. The weapon's ability to accept a silencer, fire EMP rounds, and fire in an alternate firing mode (when upgraded) permits the weapon to be useful under a variety of circumstances. The Zenith CA-40 features a modern design with orange tritium-illuminated iron sights, one of the best iron sights in the game.

The standard edition of this weapon is extremely common. Every armed personnel in the game possess an unlimited supply of CA-40s. If an armed personnel is knocked out or looted of his pistol, another pistol will spawn if he wakes up.

Elite Edition 10mm Pistol
The Elite Edition pistol is included as part of the Intruder Gear DLC, available as a free download.
 * The Elite Edition deals more damage to hard targets (robots, cars, armored components, cameras, doors, destructibles) than its regular counterpart, despite the in-game damage stat showing no difference from that of the regular counterpart. It takes only a single bullet from the silenced Elite pistol to destroy a camera.
 * Maximum range is 40 meters, slightly more than the 35 meter maximum range of the regular version.
 * Instead of an unlockable full-automatic fire mode, the Elite Edition features an unlockable 3-round-burst fire mode.

Gameplay guide
The variety of available upgrade options options 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 weapon as deadly as a silenced combat rifle. In semi-automatic firing, it has great handling, which is a hallmark of pistols in the Deus Ex series. In full auto, it pulls hard to the left, and goes through a whole 38-round magazine in about a second and a half. Nonetheless, since 10mm ammo is so common, players who primarily use the machine pistol may alternatively swap to an automatic pistol when 9mm just isn't available in great quantities.

Even without upgrades, this weapon kills fleshy, unarmored characters very quickly. Two leg shots are enough to put down armed NPCs of low durability, such as Mikael's bodyguards. Tars' bodyguards, some of the weakest characters in the game, die to a single bodyshot, while Dvali gangsters usually take 2 shots to the chest, sometimes 3. Since just a few shots will dispose of low-durability NPCs, aiming for the head is not necessary, unless they are hiding behind cover. It's generally not recommended that you fight armored opponents with the Zenith. For instance, standard metro cops can withstand 3 or 4 shots to the groin or stomach, or 2 shots to the less armored parts on their back. Black armored cops are even worse, needing 12 bodyshots at pointblank to kill, or 15 shots at about 25 meters. Regardless, if you have piles of ammo, there's nothing stopping you shooting robots, exo-suits, and turrets to bits.

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. However, due to the great handling, the laser sight is not necessary if you are using the pistol solely for aimed semi-auto shots. What this translates to, in game terms, is that if you run out of ammo on other weapons, you can grab the closest Zenith, and proceed to place precision headshots, without mods, or any worry, and still be in the fight.

Automatic fire drains ammunition very quickly. The fire rate is not quite as fast as that of the machine pistol, but is close enough, although 10mm bullets are more expensive than machine pistol ammunition, this is of little concern due to how common both ammunition and spare pistols are in the world. 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, and then score a killing headshot with the third.

The silencer, as previously mentioned, doesn't significantly lower damage while adding a potentially useful function. Note, however, the low maximum range of 35 meters (on the standard edition of the weapon). This short range limits the usefulness of the silencer, since avoiding detection is more difficult at short ranges even with a silencer.

Standard Edition Zenith CA-40
The distinguishing feature of the Standard Edition, as compared to the Elite Edition, is the automatic fire mode. Once unlocked, automatic fire works well as the primary fire mode. 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, with no perceived recoil if you're crouched and iron sighted, along with 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, automatic fire is one of few things in the game that causes terror among your enemies. One can easily observe this on the first mission in New Game+, by 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," "what's this guy's problem," and the ever-so-relevant "I'm not scared of bullets, I'm scared of that many bullets."

The unlimited supply of pistols for armed NPCs 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. Against NPCs carrying this weapon, Adam by default dies after 6 shots from this weapon.

Elite Edition Zenith CA-40
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. Though the game may claim it deals the same damage as the vanilla pistol, that's little more than a blatant lie. Being able to destroy cameras in one shot with the silencer on is a powerful ability, as is breaking police helmets in one bullet (with damage fully upgraded), rather than the two, sometimes three, shots required by the normal version.

Fully upgraded, the elite version is quite the powerhouse for how little inventory space it uses, and the 5 extra meters of range is a nice touch. With maxed out damage upgrades, it takes two body shots to kill an ARC elite at 30 meters, while a max damage normal 10mm pistol requires three shots, sometimes four. At 34 meters, the elite version still stands tall with two bodyshots to kill, while the normal pistol now takes five bodyshots to slay.

Unlike the bog standard one, the elite edition's silencer has negligible effect on the pistol's damage output, except at extreme range. At 34 meters, it takes four bodyshots with the silencer on, which is still one less bullet total to kill than the regular pistol at that range. At 18 meters, and with the silencer mounted, the elite still only requires two bodyshots to kill, while the standard variant, without silencer, needs three shots to achieve the same result.

Trivia

 * The CA-40 retains much of the old Zenith's aesthetics, but now features a squared backstrap with an internal striker 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".