Head shots.

tarendelcymir · Post by **tarendelcymir** » Mon Oct 22, 2001 7:34 am

Why does it seem like headshots have become more common in the recent updates? Not only more common, but the damage seems to have gone up. I was just playing a game against Hetz, and my undamged titan got shot in the head with a gauss cannon, and it took away 63 hp. 63 hp out of 128. That's just about half my life from a single shot against unhurt armor. Isn't that a bit excessive? I went from perfect to -20 to everything from one hit. That one shot ended the whole game for me, I couldn't even stand up after it.

IKerensky · Post by **IKerensky** » Mon Oct 22, 2001 7:51 am

That is possible, cause we had a fight 2 day ago in the campaign with my brother where we do an UNSANE number of headshoot and headkills.
Also I notice a big number of head damage on charge.
And CT isn't that much more damaged than other parts..

Thorgrim · Post by **Thorgrim** » Mon Oct 22, 2001 10:16 am

Every so often it seems like the head is being hit far too many times. Yep, we're in one of those periods. Happened to me too. Larkin didn't mention changing the damage allocation table again. So if nothing has changed the CT should be hit 3x more often than the head.

Lyhrrus · Post by **Lyhrrus** » Mon Oct 22, 2001 10:51 am

Anything doing more than 10 points of damage (and the BRG) to the head will cause some jock damage. That weapon also has a % chance equal to its damage to do "medium" jock damage which is 10d12 (avg. 65 damage, OW!). Otherwise the they have a damage*7% chance to do light jock damage (uhhh... 5d12 or something, so avg. 30.5 damage. still OW!)

(That stuff's in Iceman's guide.)

Still, certain cretins seem to have the ability to hit the head 3x more than the CT. *cough* HETZER *cough*

LarkinVB · Post by **LarkinVB** » Mon Oct 22, 2001 1:18 pm

Give your jocks a decent life support and medical skill and you don't automatically loose a battle were an unlucky head hit will cost you 50% of your hps. Thats when this underrated equipment/skill kicks in.

Thorgrim · Post by **Thorgrim** » Mon Oct 22, 2001 1:43 pm

Thorgrim · Post by **Thorgrim** » Tue Oct 23, 2001 6:04 pm

Originally posted by Larkin [Vicious Byte]:
Give your jocks a decent life support and medical skill and you don't automatically loose a battle were an unlucky head hit will cost you 50% of your hps. Thats when this underrated equipment/skill kicks in.

How about give your jocks a good constitution attribute and you no longer lose 50% of your HPs, just 30~40%? <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> This also used to be an underrated attribute, but that changed when you increased jock damage. Seems it works <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Lyhrrus · Post by **Lyhrrus** » Tue Oct 23, 2001 10:06 pm

Ummm... half of 128 hp is 63. Which means Constitution is already at 16. So...

Thorgrim · Post by **Thorgrim** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 2:25 pm

... so it can go as high as 20. That's 160 HPs. Way better.
In the past you could have your jocks not raise their initial Con (9~10) and still reach Ace and Champion ranks.

tarendelcymir · Post by **tarendelcymir** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 6:20 pm

The only problem is that the majority of the duels taking place are random duels, which means you have no control over your jock's stats, save for picking their rank. If we refrain from making our jocks always Champions, we end up with lower scores, including constitution. The same goes for medical skills, and even life support, since the titans are random, too.
Despite all that, even if your titan has Life 6, a single shot can still take away close to half the jock's HP.

[ October 24, 2001: Message edited by: tarendelcymir ]</p>

IKerensky · Post by **IKerensky** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 6:32 pm

perhaps we should have a Survival skill test , rated with the LS level to reduce/affect the damage incurred in case of an head shoot.

After all LS dont only heal pilots from damage because they reduce NB effect so Iguess they could have similar effect by protecting pilots from others injury too...

LarkinVB · Post by **LarkinVB** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 6:39 pm

Should I disable heads for duels <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

Some stats on heads : You have a 5% chance to hit the head but a 15% chance to hit the center torso (frontal). If your CT has thrice the armor of your head this will fall of more likely since it has less internal structure. The situation is often encountered if you face a missile boat which is battles nearest approximation of a normal hit distribution.

Thorgrim · Post by **Thorgrim** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 7:12 pm

Lower level jocks have lower skills too, so it's not that easy to hit with NBs. And few titans have NBs - except that lately there seems to be a trend about them... also, shields protect some against NBs.

IKerensky · Post by **IKerensky** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 8:11 pm

Yep that is all true Iceman , but not directly related to my concern.
What I say is : LS heal pilot and defend him against hasard such as Neutron Beam, dont this seems logical they also protect against concussion and chock damage too ?

LarkinVB · Post by **LarkinVB** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 8:26 pm

Originally posted by Ivan GREYWOLF Kerensky:
Yep that is all true Iceman , but not directly related to my concern.
What I say is : LS heal pilot and defend him against hasard such as Neutron Beam, dont this seems logical they also protect against concussion and chock damage too ?

They do protect against shock by preventing it completly if they are ok. I will add a protection against those head hits which can cause medium (5d12) damage. I will subtract 2 times the level of life support from the chance to happen (which is equal to the amout of damage take, 20% for a AC20 hit).

IKerensky · Post by **IKerensky** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 8:31 pm

Nice move Larkin <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

tarendelcymir · Post by **tarendelcymir** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 8:39 pm

This might be too radical, but how about making the random chance of hitting heads like 1%? I mean, with a tiny little head on a titan, how often is an un-aimed shot going to hit it? With so little armor available to put on the head, it seem to take away a lot of the fun when someone gets lucky and lands a few shots on your head and that's the end for you. It's just my personal opinion, but I think it'd be more fun if you only had a chance of hitting the head by calling the shot for it.

LarkinVB · Post by **LarkinVB** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 8:51 pm

Absolutly disagree. I know you might argue cause you lost your head too often. But ToS is still also a game of chance and mishaps. All these chances will even out in the long run and my experience tells me that players often do call for rules changes when they just pested by bad luck. 5% on hitting a head is absolutly ok for me.

IKerensky · Post by **IKerensky** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 9:43 pm

5 % luck to hit head is nice , a bit too much if you regard with Battletech ( roughly 2%, 1 on 36 ).

The new method to asset damage is nice too, but perhaps a bit too much efficient has it doesnt take in account the constitution of the pilots nor their survival skill, and it could bne nice to give survival another use ( and another hope of raising some exp. <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> ).

So could I suggest leaving the luck to damage but lower the actual damage to :
D= damage roll result
S= success of a survival skill roll ( if Surv = 50 and roll = 5, S = 45 ) expressed in percent.
LS = Life support Level ( /2 if light damage, /4 if medium, /8 if heavy ).

actual damage deal = D - ( D * S² *(LS / 2)), all negative rolls , if any = 0

In case of the Pilot miss his roll it will face full damage.

this way Low constitution pilots will still be at a disadvantage, and high constitution high survival pilots will benefit from their choice.

ex:
Newbie pilots, Surv 40%, roll 25%, Damage 40pts
LS 1 = 40 - ( 40 * 0.25² * 0.5 )= 38.75 = 38
LS 2 = 40 - (40 * 0.25² * 1 ) = 37.75 = 37
LS 3 = .......... = 36.25 = 36
LS 4 = 35
LS 5 = 33.75 = 33
LS 6 = 32.5 = 32
Experimented pilot, Surv 80%, roll 50%, Damage 40pts
LS 1 = 40 - ( 40 * 0.5² * 0.5 )= 35
LS 2 = 40 - (40 * 0.5² * 1 ) = 30
LS 3 = .......... = 25
LS 4 = 20
LS 5 = 15
LS 6 = 10
Exp pilot lucky roll, S = 80
LS 1 = 40 - ( 40 * 0.8² * 0.5 )= 27.2 = 27
LS 2 = 40 - (40 * 0.25² * 1 ) = 14.4 = 14
LS 3 = .......... = 1.6 = 1
LS 4 = 0
LS 5 = 0
LS 6 = 0

Perhaps that the formula need a bit of tweaking but it look nice and produce some nice range of result. Just need to be tested.

PrinceCorrin · Post by **PrinceCorrin** » Wed Oct 24, 2001 10:33 pm

Originally posted by Larkin [Vicious Byte]:
[QB]All these chances will even out in the long run and my experience tells me that players often do call for rules changes when they just pested by bad luck. /QB]

That is exactly why I rarely suggest changes. I don't want to express a possibly biased opinion. It is good that players DO express opinions though, sometimes they have brilliant ideas.