The head shot thing stems from and is a downside of the firing system.
In any other TBS taking a head shot would be an effective way to do max damage to an opponent, however you’d have a greatly reduced aiming chance to make that head shot. In PP because the player can manually target their shots, a sniper in particular, but other classes if close enough are able to make head shots with 100% accuracy therefore leading to a potential for the player to exploit that mechanic in order to be able to easily take out their opposition.
The solution as it stands is to make a head shot not so critical, and I would imaging hope that players will target different body parts on their opponents. Unfortunately, players being players they have quickly realised that targeting the weapon arms of their opponents is the new ‘head shot’ as far as PP goes as a game. The issue hasn’t been solved, but instead moved to an area of the body where there is still a potential for a 100% critical shot, but now one that makes little sense into the bargain.
Imho the solution that should have been used instead, would have been to let those critical head shots work as a tactic for the early part of the game, and then let the Pandorans quickly build up a response to it; of the top of my head this could have been achieved in a number of ways; either strongly armouring that part of the creature being targeted, having it be protected by other body parts (crabmen shields covering the face for example), making the creature move its head rapidly when being shot at or reducing the size of the head in order to make it harder to reliably target in the first place, giving a creature a head that screams to reduce the PP team’s will when shot, explodes, or emits poison/mist/blob when shot, you could even try moving the head’s location - it’s Lovecraftian horror after all - you could a slap a head on a Pandorian’s arris in order to make the player need to make a flanking manoeuvre if they wanted to get that shot off.
While i agree globaly, their is one thing to consider; Most things goes both way, what affect ennemi will affect player.
If a headshot can / should one shot them, it will be the same for our soldiers.
The thing is it can make the game really frustrating considering (in my game anyway) head is like the part that is destroyed 80% of time i’m hit.
If for a crab i totaly imagine mutation that can protect the head (you put some in good exemple) what about humans?
I can imagine a really heavy-armored helmet but… so… why not armor the whole body? If then, you’re either impossible to kill or ennemy weapon will scale up and make your head a target again.
I don’t know what i prefer, really. Imaginating my soldiers one shoted from afar each time i fight a sniper will be tiring regardless x)
Yeah it’s a fair point that our forces should face the same weakness, but that already exists in that they can have their own weapon arms targeted should the AI think to do it.
I agree, the obvious counter for human soldiers is a full face assault helmet, and you could then armour the whole body, but the downside there could be loss of mobility and/or aim, with perhaps a vulnerability to damage types i.e. fire or blob.
Yeah, the head shots are really stupid in PP. They made combat accuracy really good, like 6-round burst on a target at 40 metres feet good. It’s too good. It also makes cover rather useless, as they just aim for your head, and hit you six times in the head at 20 metres.
Shots to the head should cause stun, even through armour, that sounds good. That could temporarily impair your accuracy. I think the idea of “disabling” the head means the enemy gets a -1 to arithmetic rolls doesn’t seem that interesting, compared to blowing its brains out. Especially since it tends to die shortly after you disable its head, since the head has a big chunk of its HP.
One thing which must be changed if headshots should apply stuns or reduce accuracy etc. - stop Crabby’s from 100% headshot if you are in half cover. As they tend to “disable the head” over an over and over again… my Scouts (Gunslinger Boi!) Head was disabled more than 10 times by now… I dont understand how he even can run straight anymore.
It´s a joke anyways! A head shot to a human soldier should lead to immediate death. Like it is in FXcom ! Anything else destroys immersion…though…which immersion ?
Definitely. I’m not sure if that’s due to a bug, or because the accuracy is so darn high. I think this is the most accurate my soldiers have ever been in an XCOM genre game.