Headshots on MAXes

Erendil · 2011-09-06, 05:25 AM

Originally Posted by FastAndFree

I don't like this idea at all.

If shooting a MAX in the head with a couple of shots from a pistol would be a viable choice to dispose of them what would be the point of carrying AV indoors?

Or if it worked like this, would a missile to the face would instagib them? That would be so much fun for MAX operators

We have locational damage for all other types of units (softies, ground vehicles, aircraft) so it stands to reason that they'd be there for MAXes too. Why should they get special treatment? My suggestions wouldn't defeat the purpose of having MAXes if it's done right. Allowing a pistol to kill an undamaged MAX in a few shots would not be doing it right.

I just thought the killspam would be funny to see...

For starters, I'm hoping that headshot multipliers in general will only be applied to the health damage that gets past the armour. It makes sense to me that a headshot wouldn't damage the armour any more than a shot to the body would. It's the head itself that's more susceptible to damage from trauma, not the helmet that protects it.

And remember, headshot multipliers are determined on a per weapon basis. Higby said on reddit that vehicle weapons probably won't have any headshot multiplier at all, so it's quite possible that Decimators for example won't have one either, so a missile to the face may not be any different than one to the body..

But like I said in my OP, I'd like the Devs to design AP weapons so that when used against MAXes, instead of having to eat through a MAX's entire armour before you do any health damage at all, you apply a small amount of the damage done by each shot to health instead. Say, 1 pt of damage goes to health for every 10 pts of base damage dealt. Then if they applied the standard headshot damage multiplier for the weapon in question to the health that got through, even headshots would only do a handful of health damage per shot.

Here's a completely arbitrary example: Let's say in PS2 that MAXes have 100 health and 1000 armour pts, and that a Cycler has a 1.5x headshot multiplier and its AP bullets do 20 base damage to MAXes. Using the 1:10 health:armour ratio, Here's what we'd have:

All Shots to the Body: 18 armour & 2 health per shot. Death in 50 shots.
All Shots to the Head: 18 armour & (2 x 1.5) = 3 health per shot. Death in 34 shots.
STK reduction for AP headshots vs bodyshots w/ a weapon that has a 1.5x multiplier: 33%

See what I'm getting at? Doing something like this will still make MAXes a force to be reckoned with, but would also reward accuracy to softies using weapons that have accuracy in mind. Remember many classes will not be allowed to use AV weaponry at all, so this is designed to help them out a little as well.