Suit Slot: Helmet

New suit slot: The Helmet

Reduces all HS damage by 15/20/25/30/35% damage.
Does not stack with overshield or other damage reducing effects.


Headshots hitting a player with "The Helmet" have a special sound (ka-ping) and visual que (sparks/plasma) indicating the presence of "The Helmet" to attacking players.

Why not a whole helmet slot? Extra armor as an option. Or IR or UV or thermal vision. Or telescopic to x12. Or EMP shielding. You could do a whole lot with a Helmet.

I suggested this eons ago... apparently the scopes are in the weapons and the vulnerability spot is to important for them to let go... to many things are based on head shoots. Implants, skills to play... basically all shooting to infantry is based on it so...

But the extra gadgets would be nice.(which I also suggested eons ago)

Wow, never thought I'd agree with No0T on something.

But he's exactly right, headshots are too important to balance for a flat damage reduction to be allowed.

There's no balance for headshots. They are always superior to body shots in everyway. Even doing 35% reduced damage still makes the head the superior target to hit. It just adds a bit of survivability against a very specific damage set. Which is what the other suit slot damage reducers do.

For damage reduction you'd have Flak, Nanoweave and then The Helmet. Since I almost exclusively run nanoweave except when driving (and I suspect most players do) picking The Helmet would increase all damage to non headshots by 20%.

Hmm more that I think about it 35% reduction might not be enough to make it worth taking over nanoweave. But we don't want to get too carried away.

They are the more skillful shot.
If they weren't, then Body-shots, which are more plentiful, would be vastly superior due to the sheer bulk & ease of them.

35% reduced damage from weapon shots that hit the smallest target, also reducing the effect of sniper rifles, and any weapon that is geared for head-shots.
Such as the NSX series weapons built to head-shot or die.

Increase the most common shots by 20%, and reduce the skilled shots by 30%?
Either suicide, or waste any accurate shots long enough to win.

Why exactly must it compete with nanoweave, and ensure head-shots have reduced value severely?
Does flak or nano, target the harder-to-land shots? No, generalized damage.
They do not counteract skill directly.

More skillful shot huh. I wonder what the percent of missed headshots translate into body shots. Since I can only speak from my own experience I would say pretty effing high since I aim for the head most of the time but my HSR is only about 25% overall.

There's no disadvantage for shooting heads. Wearing The Helmet wouldn't make headshots disadvantageous either. It might make people wear less nanoweave though.

Well I've suggested something like this, except it's not a suit but permanently active.
That being said, I did't ask about the "doesn't stack damage reduction".

Anyway, having the option to reduce headshot "instant-kill" is a good option. Giving it for free to new player is a good thing too.
Note that 35% damage reduction against headshot allow people to tank BASR headshot, making Daimyo a better option (since you have 2-3 bullets that follow).

Question : does it affect weapon with headshot multiplier of x1 ? (like tankshell), meaning a bodyshot will deal more damage than a headshot.

Miss the head, and hit the body, So your shot went down, rather than to the sides, or above the target.

There's no disadvantage for headshots, past the likelyhood of missing the entire target.
Wear less nanoweave, to become more resistant to accuracy.

Well, not necessarily. Headshots are of course almost universally better and while one could argue this makes them overpowered/imbalanced, some weapons are sort of built around the idea of getting headshots consistently. Sniper rifles, most NS weapons, a few of the NSX guns, and arguably slower RoF weapons such as the NC's 200DMG/500RPMs. --Which are already at a greater disadvantage against nanoweave.

Specifically, these would be all the bolt-actions, the NS-15M (and all it's totally necessary variants ), NS-15A, NS-15C, Emissary, Blackhand, Tomoe, Daimyo, Naginata, (GOD)SAW, AC-X11, Reaper DMR, and Tross just off the top of my head. Legitimate arguments could be made for other weapons like the scouts and other sniper rifles, other low RoF guns, and most other sidearms.

This would just make the headshot reduction too good against too many weapons while simultaneously negating skill.

Nah. That would be silly. The Helmet wouldn't reduce damage below the non headshot damage.

Honestly hadn't given too much thought to BASR's.

Would have to give a separate modifier against BASR's and certain sniper rifles. Perhaps something like The Helmet increases the range modifier by 50/75/100/125/150% against BASR's.

So a 75m HS would do the damage equivalent of a 187m HS at max rank. I don't want to remove 1HK HS's completely.

It would also make all the non reliant HS weapons, like SMG's, shotguns, high ROF carbines and AR's and the heavy weapons better. Trade offs= balanced.

Come up against a guy with an NS11 you're better off wearing The Helmet. Against a guy using the HV45 you're better off wearing nanoweave. Trade off.

So, you literally make the harder shot equal to the body shot.
So every hard-hitting weapon that needs that head-shot to match the enemy's TTK... is screwed.
Play TR with it, watch NC be screwed.

187 meter head shot, reduced to the effect of a 75 meter shot.
Lovely.

Trade off: All accuracy-dependent weapons are subpar, all high ROF (*Cough TR, VS*) become more effective.

NC gets ****** hard.
Snipers become less valuable, as head-shots become harder to value at range.

Perhaps the most interesting part of all the arguments against The Helmet is the "eliminates skill factor". Visual and Audio feedback would of course mean that a truly skilled player would adapt to The Helmet by modifying their strategy and going for the "easier" body shots.

At least I probably would and I think I'm pretty good at this game

First shot hits, visual cue: Wasted shot, for no effect.

Opponent: aims for chest or head, does not worry about accurate enemies, whom will waste their first shot(s) on the head for no extra effect.

Pretty good eh?
While the first shot, is made, to deliver a heavy blow, it is in-fact wasted, killing time if it's a low RPM weapon severely, that can't be afforded.
Snipers at range, can't tell if the opponent will deflect the shot, until it is already wasted.
Snipers at range, are rendered less effective for their shots, until the enemy can spray them easily with high RPM.

NC's Gauss Saw, using head-shots gets on top of TR & VS's starter weapons.
With this, the first shot of the weapon is nullified, and NC can't afford the time spent for that shot, and is screwed.
First Strike advantage is turned down, and accuracy is inverted: the harder shot is worth less than the body shots.

So aiming there first, actually screws you.
And you won't know until you are screwed already.

For the weapons this wouldn't matter for; those are the high RPM weapons that already do well against nanoweave.
So high RPM does good against weave, and is the best for countering the helmet.

Well not really. Almost all weapons benefit from headshots so they'd suffer too. But on top of that, they'd benefit to a different degree than the others would be harmed. This is also a very one-sided nerf to the slow RoF faction, while in your own words benefits the high RoF faction more.

The head is a smaller target and therefore requires a greater degree of skill to consistently hit. Should players not be rewarded for skill? Otherwise we ought to all pull out auto-shotguns and blind-fire our way to victory.

Doing so would increase the OHK range of bolt-actions regardless of the use of a helmet or not. Doing so would counteract the [PU02 Sniper "Buff"] and in turn would smooth the lines between tiers. As much as I'd personally like this, the devs. have shown in the past they do not. It ain't gonna happen.

Nanoweave gets used less. I thought nanoweave was better against NC and low ROF weapons....

A lot of things are grand against NC.

But ensuring Head-shots are reduced to body-shots, and only known after the first shot, screws NC more so than TR & VS.
By the very nature of it.
Let alone the weapon series in general, that depend on head-shots to kill before being gunned down.

So you say. I just don't buy it. 200 damage body shot and 260 damage HS vs 160damage body shots and 400 damage HS. Let's assume 80% accyracy for a player shooting center mass and a 50% accuracy for a player shooting heads with 25% of misses becoming body shots.

Who has the lower TTK?

RPM.
2 bullets of 160, 320.
1 Bullet of 200 is 200.

Recall, the bullet being fired at a higher speed, is not reduced in damage higher to the speed advantage.
So the output is greater in less time.
DPS.

Gauss Saw's TTK relies on head-shots, to kill in time.

80% of the body-shots, at a higher RPM, even with lower damage per bullet, that's 80% of the rounds fired.
At 50%, weapons that fire less, lose a lot more, given they fire less bullets, so have less bullets they can afford to miss.

Otherwise, Sniper rifles would the Go-to Kill weapon in all engagements.