Request: Headshot mode for sniper rifles

[sirg]

I would like to see snipers doing what they are supposed to do - oneshoting enemy targets.

It's quite unrealistic to shoot an alien with a powerful sniper rifle without harming him. So I'm proposing a headshot mode of fire - many TUs, and requiring good sniper skill, lower chance of hit. But if you hit, then the target is dead.

I'm not suggesting to implement aiming body parts, but you can have a special mode for the rifle with a big damage boost, so if it hits then you make 300% more damage or something like that.

[TrashMan]

there already is one.

[scamp]

yep there is one already. On 'very hard' mode I use nothing else than headshots. Usually 2 headshots will down an enemy.
I have had only 1 instance where I actually 1shotted an alien. In all other cases ( 99% ) they need 2 headshots.

[DanielOR]

At a risk of sounding like a woos - this is why I won't play on "very hard" - anything hit in a head with a 20 mm round is bound to be missing significant part of the head.  this planet or the next, it is just hard to imagine them walking around with large chunks of head missing.

Just like the (alleged) true story abour a lawyer questioning a doc:
was the patient alive?
No. 
Did you check for respiration?
No. 
Did you check for pulse? Body temperature? 
No and No. 
How could you know they were not alive, then? 
Their brain was in a jar, being weighed on the coroner's scales. 
So, could the patient have been alive, since you did not check for vital signs? 
Well, I suppose he could have been practicing law somewhere...

[BTAxis]

So you're saying that a headshot from a sniper rifle should always kill its target if it hits? Why would anyone bother researching new and alien weaponry then? The sniper rifle is already the ultimate weapon after all. Not counting machine enemies.

[Sophisanmus]

Are there plans to add damage areas to the characters ingame?  If there are, I'm sure the Headshot could be adapted to by default target the 'head' area of the enemy.  Should research later reveal a better weak point, a soft spot in their protection, whatever, the sniper can hit a more damaging area.  This would be an alternative to the Headshot just doing more base damage, and the effectiveness would likely vary from target to target.

[DanielOR]

The sniper rifle, when used properly, is indeed a devasating weapon with "one shot, one kill" capability for anything remotely human.

The reason to use/research more tech is to have other options.  Sniper rifles are not the most useful weapons for clearing rooms, for example.  I suppose they can be adopted to that, if one moves very, very slowly.  For example, in a highly urban setting my sniper on the roof can often see an enemy, but not hit it.  When moving cover-to-cover, a sniper may not have enough time to find the target, shoot, and cover.  In other words, sniper is a designated killer who needs support, at the very least in shape of scouts who id the targets. 

All that being said, maybe I will stry a game with a team of 8 snipers only, just to see if it can be done.  Off the bet - capturing anything alive would be very tough with a team like that.

[sirg]

So you're saying that a headshot from a sniper rifle should always kill its target if it hits? Why would anyone bother researching new and alien weaponry then? The sniper rifle is already the ultimate weapon after all. Not counting machine enemies.

I see alot of talks about realism and people are focused in creating a realistic game, so correct me if I'm wrong but a shot in the head from any sniper rifle means instant death, especially from a late 21st century state of the art sniper rifle.

Not any soldier can score a headshot, that's the idea. Having a game design that will allow having very few skilled snipers that could do it would balance things. Besides, you can't clear a map with sniper rifles.

But, if you take the actual .50 cal sniper rifle as a reference, it can kill a target at 2kms, and it can destroy vehicles, not only kill humans. So it is the ultimate weapon, but you can't fire 20 shots in 2 seconds or something. You just have to balance things and find a way to implement this (if you want ofc) in your game.

and I'll return the question in this way - what's the point in having a sniper rifle after all, if it performs like a Garand M1 or any other rifle? In order to snipe you'll have to put a soldier on stand by and use all his TU's for that, so I wasn't thinking that you would take a headshot while moving or something wild like that...

[BTAxis]

Helmets made out of alien materials could stop a sniper rifle bullet, even one from a late 21st century rifle. Aliens are supposed to use equipment superior to anything humans can field, and most human weapons, including the sniper rifle, should be rendered obsolete after a while. That's what I'm saying. If the sniper rifle is still an insta-kill weapon by the final mission, there's something wrong.

[DanielOR]

Really?  The goal is that by final mission ALL human weapons are obsolete?  I am with Sirg here - a full-on sniper rifle is hard to wield, heavy, slow to fire...but if it hits - it hits. 

Maybe, a compromise - some aliens are so tough, even a sniper rifle won't kill 'em in one shot.  Especially if they have no head to speak of.  I would say, for any humanoid alien not wearing complete, all-inclusive armor, a head shot (can be neck shot) is instant death.  That leaves room for robots with distributed and highly parallel CPU or tough aliens with multiple brains or aliens wearing some serious armor.

Far as helmets stopping a round - OK I will buy that a helemt is so tough, it won't even dent.  But transfer of momentum still takes place.  That's some vicious whiplash there.  Imagine, it would break whatever passes for a neck there.  No way vertibrae should withstand the impact...

[BTAxis]

Well, depends on species. for humans that's true, but I imagine the Ortnoks for one might be able to deal with it better.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk realism. It's just the game formula that most human weapons should be rendered useless/obsolete. And no, that isn't all. There is a human based coilgun sniper rifle that will likely remain effective even in the late game. It isn't available from the start though.

[Sophisanmus]

High-end alien armor would not just be tough materials, but "smart" materials capable of reducing harm from whiplash and other secondary weapon effects.  Nano-tech, some form of reactive armor, force-dispersion, energy shielding, pick your poison... or antidote, as it may be.  The multiple brains thing is a nice point, cockroach anyone?  You could even have a wholly decentralized nervous system in some case, and probably redundant vitals and whatnot.  In the long run, you have to adapt to survive.

[DanielOR]

Another solution is a (small ?) change to game mechanics.  Remove the headshot entirely.  Instead, every weapon has a chance to "critical hit" - hit a vital part.  The closer the target, the easier it is to hit vital bits, hence probability is higher.  If an alien is super-armored or has no singularly critical bits, probability is zero.

An innacurate weapon, like a SMG, has a very low critical hit probability, but fires many rounds.  A sniper rifle has a significantly higher crit hit rate, especially at short range - put that round right ...up...into the left rear nostril on the end of the lower middle testi tentacle.

Another elegant idea was in UFO: Aftermath - skill called "alien anatomy", which of course requires at least an otopsy of that type of alien.  The higher the soldier's skill, the likelier they are to hit a vital point.

Just throwing thoughts out there...

[BTAxis]

Critical hits is something we're not going to have as long as Winter is on the team, and I don't like it much either. We already have a several random elements involved in combat - chance to hit, damage variation and grenade bounce. Adding more is going to make combat a big mess of randomness.

If it were up to me I'd like to take the headshot off the sniper rifle anyway, though. I don't see why there should be a special shot like that, other than that head shots are traditionally associated with sniper rifles. We don't model damage to specific body parts for any weapon, and I don't think there is a need to. Adding a firemode called headshot that does increased damage is going to give people the wrong idea (i.e. that we do) and is going to not make sense against enemies that don't even have a head.

[DanielOR]

Yup, that is reasonable and consistant.  Than the sniper rifle will be a slow-firing, far-reaching weapon that will be naturally eclipsed by something that does a better job of same...