Does Nanoweave Armor 5 (+25% health) allow you to survive a headshot from a bolt-action sniper rifle? I was not sure and decided to do some testing to find out the truth. I tested the following scenarios: 1) The M77-B with 750 dmg/shot at <10m distance, shooting at the head of a Heavy Assault with Nanoweave Armor 5. This was a one-shot kill. 2) The M77-B with 750 dmg/shot at ~300m distance, shooting at the head of a Heavy Assault without Nanoweave Armor. This was a one-shot kill. 3) The M77-B with 750 dmg/shot at ~300m distance, shooting at the head of a Heavy Assault with Nanoweave Armor 5. This left the Heavy Assault with exactly 20% health (4 full HP bars out of 20) It's worth noting that a body shot from 300m left the Heavy Assault with Nanoweave Armor 5 with approximately 80-90% health. It barely went through the shield but there was also the bio lab regeneration active. I did not take notes because I didn't consider it important at the time, so take it with a grain of salt. I'm making the following assumptions: - All classes have 500 shield and 500 health, except Infiltrators which have 500 shield and 400 health. This info comes from beta players. - Bullet damage is maximum at 10m, then linearly drops to minimum at ??m. I'm assuming that at 300m, it's at minimum. More testing is needed to truly understand it. I'm making the following conclusions: - Without Nanoweave Armor, headshots from bolt-action sniper rifles will always kill. - For all classes except the Infiltrator, Nanoweave Armor 5 is not needed to survive headshots from sniper rifles that do 750 damage. Infiltrators will always die no matter the distance or their level of nanoweave armor. - Math suggests all classes except Infiltrators only need Nanoweave Armor 1 to survive a headshot at ranges where 750 damage sniper rifles do minimum damage (this exact distance is not known). - Higher levels of Nanoweave Armor will offer increasingly better protection from headshots by decreasing the range at which you will die in one hit. - The sniper rifles with 800 damage cannot kill in one headshot at range where they do minimum damage, unless they have much lower damage dropoff (needs to be tested). I don't believe devs would add such a weapon though. I'm also making some speculations: - The headshot damage multiplier is probably around 1.5x. - Minimum damage of the M77-B is probably around 750 / 1.125 = 666.667 How do Vanu bolt-actions fit in? I believe that they have the exact same damage drop as the NC and TR versions since they also have the same bullet drop. Thanks to Mavez on Cobalt for helping me with testing. Corrections and volunteers for further testing are always welcome. TL;DR: Nanoweave Armor 1 allows you to survive bolt-action sniper rifle shots to the head, as long as you're very far away and not an Infiltrator yourself. Higher levels of Nanoweave Armor reduce the distance at which you can survive a headshot from a bolt-action. In contrast, the high damage bolt-actions will increase the distance. At closer ranges, headshots are always deadly regardless of which bolt-action rifle is used. The best bolt-actions for long distance sniping are the RAMS .50M, Longshot and Parallax.
Thanks for doing this, I guess it was our conversation earlier that started this investigation. I knew it couldn't have been a coincidence, it just happened too often. Interesting to see that even Nanoweave 1 allows you to survive a HS at minimum-damage range. 300m seems quite far, but I don't pay much attention to the ranges I engage at, with the x12 scope I judge the bullet drop by human size on my scope. I was sniping a few minutes ago, and this happened a few times again, some seemed much closer than 300m. Maybe the damage falloff starts taking affect closer than 300m even? Great post by the way.
I wanted to do this for a while but found a volunteer only today, but yes it was our convo that prompted to ask for a volunteer. The next step would be to figure out the exact range at which it's no longer a one-shot kill for each nanoweave level and to confirm that the RAMS .50M, Longshot and Parallax do indeed behave as expected.
I may be wrong but if the headshot multiplyer is 1.5x Then wouldn't a headshot with a bolt rifle be 750 + 325 = 1075 Which means someone with nanoweave above level 3 would be able to survive a headshot at any range. Don't think that's right
I doubt about surviving a headshot with nanoweave 1, the minimum damage of most weapons is reached at 75m, more far away doesn't reduce the damage, at least that's what the "Bullet Damage Values - Bullets do the max damage out to the distance listed in Bullet Max Damage, the damage then linearly decreases until reaching the value and distance listed in Bullet Min Damage." statement suggest in the http://ps2.dynet.com docs. This means the heavy was left with 100 points of health (1 bar is 25 points of health), the headshot damage was 1025. Depending on the headshot multiplier, bolt actions minimum damage is 512 (2x headshot damage) or 683 (1.5x headshot damage) This was important as we could infer the minimum damage of bolt actions without having to guess what is the headshot multiplier and get a better idea of it. infiltrators actually have 400 shields and 500 health The headshot damage multiplier is generally agreed to be 2x but there's no hard source. This number could also be different for each type of weapon.
My testing clearly shows that headshot damage multiplier is not 2x for this sniper rifle. Otherwise, at 300m I wouldn't get body shots that reduce health to approx. 80-90% while headshots leave the same target alive with 20% health left. Reducing the target with Nanoweave 5 to <90% health with a body shot means that at least 562.5 damage was dealt. If headshots doubled damage to 562.5 * 2 = 1125, the target would have died.
Yeah, that's why testing with a bodyshot would be nice for figure out the headshot multiplier. My next question would be if the headshot multiplier changes with range. If your test is correct then 1025 is the minimum headshot damage, with nanoweave 1 you can survive it, which is kind of disappointing.
The HA had Nanoweave 5 which gives him 625 health. Shields are 500. So 1125 hitpoints in total. He had exactly 20% of 625 health left, which is 125. Thus the shot did exactly 1000 damage. So even Nanoweave 1 will prevent one-shot kill headshots at 300m from a 750 dmg sniper rifle. Bolt-action minimum damage cannot be 512 like you are suggesting because it means it would take 3 body shots to kill a target with Nanoweave 1 at 300m as titpoints with Nanoweave 1 = 1050. If the shot did 1000 damage and headshot damage multiplier is 1.5x, it means that a body shot would do 666.67 damage at 300m range. That roughly matches my observation that a body shot will strip shields and reduce health somewhat. According to this, a body shot should leave the HA with nanoweave 5 at exactly 73% health. As I said, I did not pay close attention to the exact body damage because at the time it didn't come to my mind that the info would be useful, and there was also biolab regeneration going when i looked more closely a few moments later. That would mean Infiltrators need Nanoweave 5 to survive headshots at minimum damage. It's going to be hard to verify this as not many Infiltrators will have nanoweave 5.
A more concise explanation How much hitpoints are these 20%? They are exactly 125 hitpoints. This is the same amount added by Nanoweave 5. Without Nanoweave armor the target died though. Provided the assumptions about shield and health amounts are correct, the only conclusion is that the minimum headshot damage at 300m is 1000. Since even Nanoweave 1 will raise hitpoints to 1050, it will prevent one-shot kills at that range against 750 damage bolt-actions.
Yeah, nanoweave is useless to infiltrators until you get rank 5. Is hard to justify the cert cost. In this other thread with a semi auto sniper you can see that the headshot multiplier is 2x (ignore the cloak armor stuff) so it either means that headshot multiplier is not the same for all weapons or 2x is the close range multiplier while 1.5x is at long range. This is why the headshot multiplier is generally agreed to be 2x.
Ooo, this is fun. I enjoy science. I have an oddity that I can contribute, as well. I had an enemy render at an unusually long distance once and managed to pick him off with my M77-B. I marked his position on my map with my waypoint and screencapped it. He was an infiltrator and it took 5 shots. He was ~575 meters away. It took way more shots than it should have just to figure out the bullet drop and I was so amazed that the guy stood there and took it I wasn't really paying attention to how long it took, so his shields may have recharged at some point. That, or the drop off doesn't have a minimum. Is the minimum damage reduction confirmed from game files or something?
that is an awesome shot. I think my greatest was killing a reaper while in flight lol. He had a sliver of life left and believe it or not bolt action rifles will kill air crafts....not sure how many bullets it would take to kill from full health but at least with a sliver left it took two
Wait what? Weren't the new bolt actions introduced and advertised as "makes sure to kill with one headshot" ?
I don't need to, I don't spend money on this game anymore. And I indeed asked for a refund for the LA80.
I've yet to see anyone survive a headshot from my SR-7. I either get a body shot and it just knocks out their shields or they drop. I've had lots of testing with this by camping vehicle pads from damn near clipping distance. Heavies, infs, doesn't matter.
