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Helmets and head-shots

greenlemonade

Grizzled Veteran
Sep 20, 2010
793
189
I realize that WW2 helmets were mainly to stop shrapnal ect., but they could turn glancing blows. Particularly from SMGs.

Is this implemented in game? It seem's like most SMG kills are from head-shots.

Shouldn't headshots be more like Killing Floor, where you can survive a glancing blow? I have yet to see a helmet deflect anything but a 9MM pistol round.
I've also seen shots that graze the top of the helmet count as autokills, and that seems just wrong.

Your thoughts?
 
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I can't really understand if they offer any protection at all, since considering the amount of unregistered hits due to weird lagspikes, bugs, bad hitboxes etc. is overwhelming, but I think rifles should always knock out an enemy in 1 shot at least when they dont hit a hand or a foot.
 
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Due to the temporary cavity of a bullet, especially that Rifle cartridges create, a round that hits the helmet or punches through your head without hitting your brain may knock you out, or possibly still kill you, which effectively renders you combat ineffective.

In most scenarios temporary cavity does little to no physical damage, but the brain, while it may not recieve physical damage, may set you out of action.
 
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As far as I understand it, helmets are really pretty much useless against firearms at closer distances. Pierced so easily. And even deflected ones can mess a person up.

If a bullet hit as an angle small enough to deflect the bullet, it probably would not even have hit the head to begin with (the helmet protrudes from the head - not skin tight).

I hear the clonk of the helmet hit now and then in the game. I once accidentally shot a team mate at close range and it plonked, and he survived. I think he had to bandage, not sure. I don't remember seeing helmets being shot off the head. Neither have I seen heads decapitated, with helmet on nor off (a pity. There is dismemberment after all!)
 
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I've asked but don't think I got an answer, so I tested it on teammates. At least from what I've seen, the helmet is a model seperate from the head and shooting at just the helmet doesn't count as a hit on the player. I'd like to see the helmet interacted with as a layer of steel rather than being intangible to the bullet penetration system. Besides, a SMG round that went through two layers of plaster and lathe probably wouldn't penetrate a helmet. I'd test this myself, but I only own rifles and I live too close to a school.
 
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The US helmets were designed properly to stop glancing blows from low velocity projectiles but that's mostly ricochets, bits of shrapnel, and way distant pistol or rifle rounds that had lost all of their velocity (won't happen in this game with the short ranges things are at). Russian and German helmets are both very thin as I have handled both. They will not stop much of anything but slow shrapnel and the rain.


The game has enough of a problem just registering hits so having calculations for clothing and armor is a ways away if not just impossible for Tripwire.
 
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Due to the temporary cavity of a bullet, especially that Rifle cartridges create, a round that hits the helmet or punches through your head without hitting your brain may knock you out, or possibly still kill you, which effectively renders you combat ineffective.

In most scenarios temporary cavity does little to no physical damage, but the brain, while it may not recieve physical damage, may set you out of action.

It might, but it might not. I know a man who survived being hit in the head by a rifle round that had deflected off the ground, and he was not wearing a helmet at the time. After being shot, he was still able to kill all three assailants. And though the round hit him after being deflected, it was a rifle round from close range and he wasn't wearing a helmet, and in fact he was still able to kill the assailants after the round lodged its self in the back of his head. So a pistol round traveling at a very low angle could bounce without making you combat ineffective.

Still, I would consider it rare enough that it doesn't take priority over fixing the bugs that are in the current build.
 
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I could see pistol rounds getting deflected just for purely, "Ahh!! WTF!?" moments, but I feel that this is such a minor part of the game that it just doesn't matter.

I'd imagine it would take a lot of time to re-model the helmets (so that they were "made" with a "substance" that wouldn't allow for as much bullet penetration), and also you would probably have to do serious engine work regarding bullet physics.

In all of my knowledge of FPS games, I believe the Flashpoint series are the only games to incorporate ricochets and shrapnel, and honestly I'm not even sure about ricochets. But I do know that explosions can create shrapnel, because I've been killed by a blast that was easily 20m away, but have lived from other blasts that were closer. But again, I can't say for sure, it's been 7 years since I played those games.
 
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