Mod interest?

Look it up, the original SMOD was for pre-2007 HL2, and basically cracked open the DLLs for an impressive control over almost everything. You can even easily add your own weapons that shoot cluster fragmentary grenades at machinegun rates if you want.

SMOD Standalone basically updates it to do the same for the latest versions of HL2, forward compatible.

I know SMOD, but I looked into its features and found them lacking and just went with a .cfg mod because it was (I thought) almost as good for my purposes with a lot less effort and a much easier install. But if it allows me to mod HL2 with the features of the newer episodes and Black Mesa... Well, that certainly is an upgrade. I could do quite a bit with that. Like give particular enemies resistances to particular weapons, and possibly change how much damage they take from hits in different locations. I'll look into it when I have the time, but don't expect anything to come of it for a while.

Hmmm... I suppose I should probably also mod the fan remakes of Opposing Force and Blue Shift once they come out, shouldn't I? I mean, both .cfg mods like I'm presently doing and later SMOD Standalone form.

I have now finished the updates. Well, I finished them hours ago, but I have now actually uploaded them. For Half-Life 2, here are the differences since you finished Ravenholm, in no particular order:

1. Freeman takes double body and non-locational damage.

2. Ammunition is provided in one half the previous amount.

3. The pulse rifle is 50% more powerful.

4. Overwatch elites now have 12.5% more health.

5. Alyx's gun does 50% less damage.

6. Poison zombies and headcrabs now have 150% more health, and do twice as much damage.

7. Missiles are now twice as powerful. Not that they needed any help, just making the strider's health match up to the number of missiles that kill it.

8. Crowbar does 25% less damage.

9. The shotgun now does 1/3 more damage.

10. The dropship and stationary guns now do five times as much damage.

11. The hunter-chopper has twice as much health and the APCs and dropship containers have 50% more health.

12. Hunter-chopper bombs do twice as much damage.

13. The APC's missiles now do 250 damage and will kill Gordon in 2 hits on hard, 3 on normal and 4 on easy.

I'll look into it when I have the time, but don't expect anything to come of it for a while.

Sounds good. Bear in mind the number of really cool additional weapons in SMOD, including the banana bomb that you get at the beginning of the airboat section. (and the laser gun that PWNs everything)

Not interested in that. I just want to give HL2 more updated features. Like enemy resistances, and unique shot placement values for different enemies, and shot placement multipliers for different weapons. Maybe give the guns without secondary fire modes iron sights, like the revolver from Black mesa...

I'm going to keep thinking about this, this has potential.

Also, regarding the current .cfg mods:

The last difficulty spike was not sufficient. At least, not for Gordon. It was enough for Barney, it remains to be seen if it was enough for Adrian. I increased the damage Freeman takes on his body by 25%. That is now two and a half times what it used to be, and 50% of the damage Gordon's enemies take. For instance, a 9mm bullet now does 3 damage to Freeman on hard (to the chest, at least) where it does 5 to everyone else, and a zombie swing does 13/25 to him where it does 25/50 to everyone else. Of course, having 200 health, the special effect of the armour points in the GoldSrc version of the game (-40% damage), and taking 50% less damage than everyone else at all times does make Gordon quite durable anyway, but he now at least notices bullets.

EDIT:

A 25% increase for Adrian, just to see how it goes. He now takes full damage, although of course he doesn't have any weak spots like Barney does. If this is too much, I'll dial it back, but I think I can deal.

I also increased the power of the thornets from 5 damage to 10. This is for balance, as it's hard to score headshots with it (and with headshots being so potent that's more important now) and other weapons aren't as prone to ammunition shortages anymore making its infinite ammo less useful. It also makes the grunts considerably more dangerous, so I ended up doubling the damage they take when hit on their plating (in Black mesa) to compensate, though no adjustment was needed for the GoldSrc games because they needed an upgrade anyway. Snarks now also do double damage for the same reason.

Lastly, in all the GoldSrc games, I am increasing the power of the MP5 from 5 to 8. This is because of the headshot adjustment again, which made the very accurate pistol more powerful than the SMG at most ranges. This gives power back to the SMG, allowing it to be useful again, because when playing Blue Shift I found it was really only more effective than the pistol within a couple metres. No adjustment required for Black Mesa's MP5 or the MP7 from Half-Life 2, they're both actually pretty accurate in short bursts. Also, realistically an MP5's MUCH longer barrel would make the rounds it fires do a bit more damage and penetrate deeper than the same rounds fired from a pistol.

Last patch note for the night: The houndeye is now slightly more fragile, but hits like it's in a Civil Protection episode. To be exact, its health is now 1/3 less, but it deals 2/3 more damage. That means it has 20 hit points in GoldSrc (low enough to be killed in a single shotgun blast) and 40 in Black Mesa (in Black Mesa it takes double damage from 9mm bullets and quadruple from buckshot), but it deals 100 damage in GoldSrc (100 to Adrian and Barney, 60 with armour, 50 to Freeman, 30 with armour) and 50 in Black Mesa (25 to Freeman, keep in mind this attack is much faster than the GoldSrc version). Their new status as the new glass cannon with the slow attack means you will almost certainly never be hit by them, but if you do you will be wrecked in a real hurry (except in Black Mesa, where the damage is less severe but harder to avoid).

I mention the other guns because you also can replace the defaults with custom weapons, using whatever ammo type/capacities you want, damage, material penetration performance, add riot shields to the combine, etc.

Right, I do get that and may take advantage of it. Specifically, I might add in a few new guns for later chapters, and I'm certainly going to make some small tweaks like making the MP7 a bit more accurate. But, for the most part, I really just want to set resistances for different enemies, change their shot placement values, make different guns respond to shot placement in different ways and include the placement system into the iron sights feature several weapons would have.

A few examples of each:

A shotgun pellet would deal 8 damage to zombies, 4 damage to wildlife, 2 damage against Civil Protection metrocops, 1 damage against Overwatch troopers and 0.5 damage against Overwatch elites, where a pulse rifle bolt would deal 20 damage to zombies, wildlife and metrocops, 15 to overwatch troopers and 10 to elites. This would prioritize using the shotgun on wildlife and especially zombies, and using the pulse rifle on Overwatch and especially elites. (Note: The health differences between these units would also plummet. The metrocops would have 50, troopers would have 75 and elites 100. But the resistances for the metrocops would all be higher than for wildlife, the resistances for troopers would all be higher than for metrocops and the resistances for elites would all be higher than for troopers.)

Zombies would take 4x normal headshot damage and normal body damage, but 1/4 limb damage. This would prioritize shot placement on the zombies, forcing you to slow down and aim with your weapons, as a pistol would do them in one to the head but take over a hundred to the arms. Or just use the shotgun and blast them in the chest because it's overpowered as hell against them. Meanwhile, metrocops would take normal head and limb damage, but 0.75x abdominal damage and 0.5x chest damage. Overwatch troopers would take 0.5x damage to the body in general, and overwatch elites would also take 0.75x limb damage. (Obviously, these values are the result of their body armour, just like their resistances.)

The AR15 (Overwatch weapon, semi-auto, has an iron-sight mode, deals 15 damage and is very accurate) would deal 0.5x headshot damage, normal body damage and 2x limb damage. This makes the AR15 much less effective performing headshots, but it loses less hitting the limbs. This would allow it to deal only 1/2 instead of 1/4 damage hitting the arms of CPs and Overwatch, as their arms are always in front of their chest. The pulse rifle would be the polar opposite. 2x headshot damage, normal body damage and 0.5x limb damage. This means the pulse rifle demands better placement and is more readily defeated by enemies that keep their arms in front of their chest.

When in iron sights mode, the pistols and AR15 would deal 1.5x normal headshot damage, 2x normal body damage and 3x limb damage. (Thus making the standard multipliers 3 for the head, 2 for the chest, 1 for the abdomen, 1.125x for the legs and 0.75x for the arms.) This allows a player using the iron sights on their USP or Python to dispatch enemies much faster, especially if you're aiming for the chest as it both gets double damage there and if an enemy's arm is in the way you won't lose as much while using the iron sights.

If possible, I'd also make the crossbow locational. So you can headshot with it like you're supposed to, and I can drop its damage to 60.

And as for the idea of riot shields, I can see that for CPs instead of overwatch, particularly in the City 17 chapter. From the front, riot shield CPs would take 1/2 from the USP, Python and MP7, 1/4 from melee attacks, the crossbow and pulse weapons, and 1/8 from buckshot, explosives and physics objects. This would make them ideal for combating the rebels, as all rebel weapons would deal fairly minimal damage through their shields except for the occasional AR15 (and all the rebels in the areas they're in use shotguns and MP7s, and once in melee combat their stun batons (which deal 20 damage to civilians and 10 to Freeman) would be effective while they themselves take very little melee damage (taking 15 hits from a rebel, or 10 from Freeman) and would be more or less unstoppable. To defeat them, you'd need to use the AR15 you collected from the overwatch in previous chapters, a weapon that you won't be able to replenish ammo for until you're fighting the overwatch again, or shoot them a LOT with the pistol, MP7 or python.

I'd also shake up the weapon distribution, giving some metrocops Pythons once you encounter the Python the first time and all those in City 17 would use MP7s, shotguns or paired riot shield and shock baton and have 50% more health. (I found the model I'll use for the City 17 metrocops, too. It's a trenchcoat model.) The new AR15 would completely replace the MP7 for overwatch troopers, though of course the MP7 would stay in use for metrocops and be quite common amongst rebels, and would be their primary weapon, more common than the shotgun or pulse rifle (though elites still always use the stronger pulse rifle).

Lastly, there'd be new enemy subtypes as well. There'd be CP officers with Python revolvers starting the very moment you get the Python yourself (the two coming through the door would be Python-wielding officers). While officers are present, their subordinates fire more accurately (1/2 spread). There would also be CP medics, who can heal their squadmates and stick close to the officers to put priority on healing them, but only carry USPs (even in the City 17 chapter, and they also wouldn't upgrade armour in City 17, though their healing ability doubles), have no stun batons (so they only do 1/2 melee damage and don't white out your screen when they hit you) and aren't as accurate with their pistols (2x spread).

Oh, and for the record? I've already found all of the models I'd need for this.

I might also consider doing a few new maps of my own, but I'd need help with that. And I'd mostly focus on resistance groups fighting the Combine before and after the Nova Prospekt attack if I did. Probably make the protagonist of that campaign a rebel instead of Freeman, bring back some HL1/Opposing Force enemies, and add remants of the Xenian and human military as the player's allies after the Nova Prospekt attack. Vortigaunt and marine companion from the beginning, because they're both awesome, later with grunts and controllers, more marines and black ops after the Nova Prospekt attack, and maybe a mission at the end where you escort a gargantua? I don't know, we'll see. I'd have to get permission to use resources from Black Mesa, and then I'd need some help with something of that scale... But without any of that, I can definitely do the mods for HL2 and episodes.

Sounds good... I'd play it.

The modified version of HL2, or the new maps? The former I can definitely do, but the latter takes more than I alone can provide. I'd love just to see a Xenian grunt beat the fuck out of an Overwatch trooper, so I'd really love to see this entire thing come together, but it's a lot of work and I can't exactly do the whole thing myself. Plus I need permission to use other people's resources, though I don't see any reason why they'd say no. But if I can't do the total conversion mod, I guarantee you I can at least do the HL2 gameplay overhaul.

NO, FOR THE EXACT REASONS I JUST SAID.

What reason was that? It wouldn't stop rifles? Like 90+% of gun crime is committed with handguns.

I DID NOT SAY IT WAS WEAKER. I SAID IT FUCKING EXPLODES. THIS IS THE SECOND TIME I HAVE SAID THIS. THERE WILL NOT BE A THIRD.

 

I really, REALLY hate repeating myself. I especially hate it repeating myself because somebody just COMPLETELY FUCKING IGNORED SOMETHING I HAVE SAID. I hate it even more when somebody completely fucking ignores something I have said in order to keep trying to pretend I hold a particular position that I DO NOT HOLD in order to keep arguing against that position THAT I DO NOT HOLD. You are doing that. STOP DOING THAT.

You said that Combine energy weapons would be inferior to modern rifles against armored opponents, to the point that even soft body armor completely ineffectual against modern rifles would protect against them. This was reflected in both your comments and your .cfg mods, where the 5.56 in Opposing Force does slightly more damage than the Pulse Rifle.

"An energy weapon that fires bolts that explode on impact in the second game. That's all your standard weapons that deal locational damage. Guess what ALL of these weapons have in common. That's right, they don't penetrate worth a shit. They'll be stopped by a layer of III-A body armour just fine, and assuming the armour of heavily armoured soldiers and scifi future-cops is at least III-A everywhere isn't a stretch at all. All these weapons will be stopped by the arms of a combatant.

In real life, though, people have these things called "rifles". Funny thing about rifles, they don't care much about most forms of armour. They'll go right through an NIJ III-A sleeve just fine, out the other side just fine, and still hit the chest. Sure, the two layers of III-A armour will weaken them a lot, but they'll still go through."

And I pointed out that wouldn't make sense, because...

1. The Pulse Rifle deals high damage in-game to the heavily armored Overwatch.

2. A weaker Combine pulse weapon blasted a man in half.

3. We have no idea how the weapon itself works. We don't know anything about it other than that it's powerful.

4. The Combine chose to develop this weapon system (they did not have it prior) for use by their Transhuman arm, even though they could have easily just used modern weapons if that's what they needed, as the rebels all wear III-A vests.

Valve has never, EVER been concerned with realism, they are concerned with aesthetic design. Giving them the vest makes sense, it makes them look more like rebels since they're scavenging enemy equipment. Giving them the full CP jacket, however, is too much visually because it would have made them look too much like their enemies. There would have been very little difference in their silhouettes and so much of them also being the same colour and texture would have made them look like a CP on first glance. Even Barney, established to BE a CP, has a different colour armour to make him look different and was placed in an area with no other CPs in it to make sure you didn't get him confused with them. Remember, you could shoot your allies in early versions of Half-Life 2. They needed to make them visually distinct on first glance.

I'm aware of that. However, I doubt that the rebels wearing CP armor (not other scavenged armor, like pre-war armor or Overwatch armor) and them having the exact same amount of health as the CPs was coincidence. They could have easily worn the full outfit and differentiated themselves via other scraps of clothing, accessories, and different pants, shoes, and head wear. Barney had uniquely colored CP armor?

What reason was that? It wouldn't stop rifles? Like 90+% of gun crime is committed with handguns.

I am getting really sick of this shit. I have answered this question repeatedly. This will be the last time.

1. The arms can't cover the entire chest.

2. Most gun crime is committed upon UNARMOURED CIVILIANS, you daft git.

3. Police officers generally aren't shot with their arms up and their weapons out. They're shot by surprise and don't have their weapons drawn. Armouring their arms would have no impact here.

4. Police don't get shot much. Their armour serves them well enough for the circumstances they would actually be shot at in, and all sleeves on their armour would do for most of them is increase the weight they haul around.

5. People who go out prepared for combat, like soldiers or police SWAT members, DO HAVE FUCKING ARMOUR ON THEIR FUCKING ARMS.

You said that Combine energy weapons would be inferior to modern rifles against armored opponents, to the point that even soft body armor completely ineffectual against modern rifles would protect against them.

NO I FUCKING DID NOT, LIAR.

This was reflected in both your comments

NO IT FUCKING WAS NOT, LIAR.

and your .cfg mods, where the 5.56 in Opposing Force does slightly more damage than the Pulse Rifle.

The two are in TOTALLY DIFFERENT GAMES, fighting TOTALLY DIFFERENT ENEMIES. Comparing their damage values directly is pointless, they both have to fight different enemies that are protected differently. The 5.56 has to deal with soft conventional armour against which it is very effective. The pulse rifle has to deal with future-armour that would (if the Combine is not totally fucking oblivious) be specifically designed to defeat it. I have to base their damage values off of the enemies they face in their various games. I also have to adjust their damage to not totally break the game.

And I pointed out that wouldn't make sense, because...

You're intentionally missing the point, or you're very stupid, because...

1. The Pulse Rifle deals high damage in-game to the heavily armored Overwatch.

Damage and penetration are NOT THE SAME THING. A sword slash deals extremely massive, nearly-unparalleled damage, but can be defeated by a thin layer of metal rings. A 5.56 deals very little damage, but would go through half a dozen men front to back and still be lethal. The pulse rifle FUCKING EXPLODES on FUCKING IMPACT and is thus FUCKING INCAPABLE OF FURTHER PENETRATION. How are you SO FUCKING STUPID that this point escapes you? HOW THE FLYING FUCK does a projectile that has already exploded keep going to penetrate into another part of the target? IT FUCKING DOESN'T, THAT'S HOW. It doesn't matter how much damage it does on the part it hit, it STILL could not POSSIBLY keep going because it just FUCKING EXPLODED and it doesn't FUCKING EXIST ANYMORE YOU DAFT BASTARD.

2. A weaker Combine pulse weapon blasted a man in half.

There is NOTHING that says the combine auto-turrets are weaker than the pulse rifle. In fact, that seems TOTALLY FUCKING BACKWARDS, since it fires a larger pulse projectile with a larger flash and a more impressive impact, and the pulse rifles DON'T BLOW THINGS IN FUCKING HALF.

And don't you FUCKING DARE say the in-game damage value. Valve makes the M2 Browning weaker than a Glock 17. The in-game damage values are COMPLETELY AND ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WORTHLESS.

3. We have no idea how the weapon itself works. We don't know anything about it other than that it's powerful.

Bullshit. We know it fires an energy projectile, and the projectile explodes on impact. We know this explosion draws blood, and leaves scorch marks like any other explosion. We know that this explosion has no radius on it, suggesting it is concentrated into the target. We know this concentrated explosion does not exit the other side of the target.

ALL of these things tell us how this weapon performs. And performance is ALL we need to know. It deals concentrated blast damage to the surface of a target, with signs of both a thermal and kinetic component. That's plenty of information.

4. The Combine chose to develop this weapon system (they did not have it prior) for use by their Transhuman arm, even though they could have easily just used modern weapons if that's what they needed, as the rebels all wear III-A vests.

They did NOT develop a new weapon system. They took a weapon system they ALREADY FUCKING HAD ON EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SYNTH BIGGER THAN A FUCKING HUNTER, then they made it smaller and put grips and a stock on it. That isn't developing a new technology, that's adapting an existing one and NOTHING FUCKING MORE.

I'm aware of that. However, I doubt that the rebels wearing CP armor (not other scavenged armor, like pre-war armor or Overwatch armor) and them having the exact same amount of health as the CPs was coincidence. They could have easily worn the full outfit and differentiated themselves via other scraps of clothing, accessories, and different pants, shoes, and head wear.

Except that Valve thought this worked better aesthetically, set their health to the same for balance and to fuck with realism. And it DOES work better aesthetically, as it makes the the CPs and rebels have a VERY different silhouette, where the full suit would have made their silhouette VERY similar. In the original version all the way up to quite late (as they have dialogue recorded for friendly fire), you could shoot your allies. If there's very little difference at first glance in a circumstance where stopping for a second glance gets you shot a couple more times, there is going to be a lot of friendly fire. It was IMPORTANT they be as different as humanly possible.

Barney had uniquely colored CP armor?

Yeah, but I think only in the chapters AFTER the battle of Nova Prospekt. It's darker and lacks the slight blue tint of the regular CP armour. He also doesn't wear a helmet, of course, which this subtle difference only reinforces. Barney IS a CP, and they still went out of their way to make him aesthetically different by altering his colour sheme and silhouette. And then they didn't put him in any chapters with CPs in them, just to make sure he wasn't confused for them.

Now I have had ENOUGH of your shit. Either ADDRESS THE POINTS I AM MAKING, or QUIT PRETENDING TO ARGUE. You don't get to ignore somebody's points when you can't defeat them, misrepresent their position even after they have clarified it is exactly not what you are claiming it is and then pretend to be making an argument against their position, and still expect to still be treated with respect.

1. The arms can't cover the entire chest.

2. Most gun crime is committed upon UNARMOURED CIVILIANS, you daft git.

3. Police officers generally aren't shot with their arms up and their weapons out. They're shot by surprise and don't have their weapons drawn. Armouring their arms would have no impact here.

4. Police don't get shot much. Their armour serves them well enough for the circumstances they would actually be shot at in, and all sleeves on their armour would do for most of them is increase the weight they haul around.

5. People who go out prepared for combat, like soldiers or police SWAT members, DO HAVE FUCKING ARMOUR ON THEIR FUCKING ARMS.

1. They can cover a good portion of it.

2. I'm aware of that. But the statistic as just to show that, in general, police officers don't have to deal with rifles, since almost no criminals have them. III-A arm sleeves would therefore be highly helpful for most officers.

3. - 5. There. Simple. No amount of cursing and yelling was necessary for this. Though, I've never seen soldiers and SWAT wear armor on their arms.

NO I FUCKING DID NOT, LIAR.

NO IT FUCKING WAS NOT, LIAR.

I just quoted you saying that III-A armor would protect against Combine pulse weapons. There's also this comment where you explicitly say the pulse rifle would be ineffective against enemies in armor:

ME: "Scaled for damage, wouldn't that make it weaker than the 5.56 M249 from Opposing Force? Do you actually think it is or is that just for gameplay reasons?"

YOU: "Yes, it would. To the OSIPR's credit, it is a functional energy weapon with a very small magazine that holds a LOT of ammunition and hits pretty well, but the hit effect, a small, concentrated surface blast, makes me believe it isn't a very good armour penetrator compared to a rifle and that's important to the damage scores I end up assigning... I have no doubt the OSIPR would be better against some targets, but against soldiers in padded body armour it seems doubtful it would be all that effective if it really is dealing blast damage."

The two are in TOTALLY DIFFERENT GAMES, fighting TOTALLY DIFFERENT ENEMIES. Comparing their damage values directly is pointless, they both have to fight different enemies that are protected differently. The 5.56 has to deal with soft conventional armour against which it is very effective. The pulse rifle has to deal with future-armour that would (if the Combine is not totally fucking oblivious) be specifically designed to defeat it. I have to base their damage values off of the enemies they face in their various games. I also have to adjust their damage to not totally break the game.

Wait, so you're assuming Combine future-armor is completely different from what modern soldiers would use? While that's not explicitly contradicted anywhere, I don't recall anything about it being different. It certainly didn't look futuristic, and in-game the Combine soldiers are given the exact same health as the marines from the first game (and we know that the value of a hit point is the same between games, as headcrabs, barnacles, and zombies all have the same health). You describing the Overwatch soldiers having the same in-game health as the marines ("how much health are the Overwatch soldiers supposed to have?"--->"150, same as the HECU marines"), as well as you not bringing up the "Future Armor" explanation when I asked you why 5.56 > pulse rifle shots earlier (you just said that the pulse rifle would be ineffective against armored enemies), didn't give me the impression you thought that Combine armor was wildly different.

Damage and penetration are NOT THE SAME THING. A sword slash deals extremely massive, nearly-unparalleled damage, but can be defeated by a thin layer of metal rings. A 5.56 deals very little damage, but would go through half a dozen men front to back and still be lethal. The pulse rifle FUCKING EXPLODES on FUCKING IMPACT and is thus FUCKING INCAPABLE OF FURTHER PENETRATION. How are you SO FUCKING STUPID that this point escapes you? HOW THE FLYING FUCK does a projectile that has already exploded keep going to penetrate into another part of the target? IT FUCKING DOESN'T, THAT'S HOW. It doesn't matter how much damage it does on the part it hit, it STILL could not POSSIBLY keep going because it just FUCKING EXPLODED and it doesn't FUCKING EXIST ANYMORE YOU DAFT BASTARD.

Again, we don't know if the pulse rifle deals damage by exploding. I always assumed it used teleportation technology somehow going by the effect it produces (it's the same effect produced by the mini teleporter in Black Mesa East), and the animations for most of the other Combine pulse weapons (the guns on the Hunter and Strider, as well as the energy ball, disintegrate humanoid NPCs into nothingness with the same particle effect as the teleporter). I never said it would PENETRATE, just that it would be effective against heavily armored enemies, and it wouldn't necessarily have to penetrate to do that considering how weird Combine technology is. Which is supported by the game since, well, it is.

Also, I just checked HL2, and this "explosion" doesn't leave scorch marks. Just "holes", like all the bullet-firing weapons. Where did you see scorch marks?

There is NOTHING that says the combine auto-turrets are weaker than the pulse rifle. In fact, that seems TOTALLY FUCKING BACKWARDS, since it fires a larger pulse projectile with a larger flash and a more impressive impact, and the pulse rifles DON'T BLOW THINGS IN FUCKING HALF.

They deal less in-game damage than the Pulse Rifle, and don't actually produce more impressive effects by my eyes (the Pulse Rifle appears to produce significantly stronger recoil, for what that's worth). Assuming that pulse auto-turrets are SO MUCH stronger than the standard Combine service rifle, is there any reason why the Combine would stick these super-fuckawesome-guns on their turrets and leave their soldiers with pea-shooters weaker than pre-war firearms? The turret is not that big, it's very thin, and it produces next to no recoil, so surely it couldn't that hard to porduce something close in strength and give it to the soldiers, who already carry heavy bulky rifles? Also note that all other infantry-level Combine pulse weapons (ceiling turrets in the Citadel, autocannon equivalents in Episode 2, HMG-equivalents encountered in stationary fortifications, sniper rifle, etc.) all do significantly more damage than both the pulse rifle and the turret, so it's not like Valve just had something against the automated turrets doing that much damage. It wouldn't be at all disruptive for game balance, either.

Somewhat. The pulse turret only appears to have blown something in half because of the scenery; you're in a room and hear pulse turrets firing for a few seconds. You walk into the next room and see a pulse turret sitting near a hole in the wall. You knock over the turret and see two bodies piled up plus a pair of severed legs. Walking past the legs will reveal half of a zombie hiding under some rubble. You can see a similar scene (i.e. zombie torsos separated from legs) in a couple of other Combine outposts that don't have auto-turrets, just soldiers with pulse rifles.

And don't you FUCKING DARE say the in-game damage value. Valve makes the M2 Browning weaker than a Glock 17. The in-game damage values are COMPLETELY AND ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WORTHLESS.

They don't, actually. They make the .357 stronger than the M2 Browning, but that's not what you said. The two pistols are more like extreme outliers than anything else; aside from them, there's at least a bit of sense to the relative damages, even if they're not remotely realistic (e.g. HD pack assault rifle = 5, 7.62x51 = 10, .50 BMG = 20 (or 10) [depends on a couple of things], 25mm autocannon = 60; SMG = 4, pistol = 5, pulse rifle = 8, emplacement gun = 15). HL2's shotgun is another extremely weird case, but it's implied that there's something off about it and that it's not just firing regular buckshot, as Combine squad leaders are issued this gun instead of a logically-not-worthless-gun.

But okay, Valve gets weird with damage values of real world weapons for the sake of balance. That's clear in several cases, mostly with the pistols and some of the vehicles. But why would that matter with completely fictional weapons? Since there are no cutscenes, or officially given numbers, or even much dialogue suggesting how the fictional HL weapons like the pulse rifle work, the relative damages in-game are one of the only things we have. While they're not conclusive by any means, they do give us an idea, as we have nothing else to really go on.

You're doing the same thing you did with the thornet gun, where you assume you know the limits of a completely fictional weapon in a series that plays fast and loose with real-world science, and then use those made-up limits to ignore the game and assume said weapon sucks, even though it's depicted as being effective in-universe. The thornet gun killed full-armored marines and even HEV-suited scientists, and the pulse rifle was chosen as the standard weapon of the Overwatch rather than any old Earth firearm. Now, while that doesn't give us any specifics, it still would indicate that it's silly to suggest that the pulse rifle is significantly less effective against armor, even soft armor, than modern weapons. If that was the case, don't you think you'd see at least one Combine soldier armed with a regular rifle?

Bullshit. We know it fires an energy projectile, and the projectile explodes on impact. We know this explosion draws blood, and leaves scorch marks like any other explosion. We know that this explosion has no radius on it, suggesting it is concentrated into the target. We know this concentrated explosion does not exit the other side of the target.

 

ALL of these things tell us how this weapon performs. And performance is ALL we need to know. It deals concentrated blast damage to the surface of a target, with signs of both a thermal and kinetic component. That's plenty of information.

1. Every in-game source of damage draws blood (except for the explosives... I think?).

2. Where does it leave scorch marks?

3. No weapon penetrates through any NPC in any of the games.

4. Have you considered that it might just teleport away whatever it hits?

They did NOT develop a new weapon system. They took a weapon system they ALREADY FUCKING HAD ON EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SYNTH BIGGER THAN A FUCKING HUNTER, then they made it smaller and put grips and a stock on it. That isn't developing a new technology, that's adapting an existing one and NOTHING FUCKING MORE.

It is, in fact, a different weapon system, in the same way an autocannon and pistol are different weapon systems. That means, at one point, the Combine actually made the decision to make a human-compatible pulse weapon and standardized it. My question before was why even bother if it was apparently inferior to modern weapons in several areas? The Combine show that they have no problem just giving some of their troops regular bullet hoses.

Except that Valve thought this worked better aesthetically, set their health to the same for balance and to fuck with realism. And it DOES work better aesthetically, as it makes the the CPs and rebels have a VERY different silhouette, where the full suit would have made their silhouette VERY similar. In the original version all the way up to quite late (as they have dialogue recorded for friendly fire), you could shoot your allies. If there's very little difference at first glance in a circumstance where stopping for a second glance gets you shot a couple more times, there is going to be a lot of friendly fire. It was IMPORTANT they be as different as humanly possible.

There was no reason for them to have exactly that amount of health (40, as opposed to, say, 30-35), as they're hardly in the game, and when they are, they're mostly there to get one-shotted by sniper rifles, mines, grenades, etc. The full suit would've made them look MORE similar, sure, but you could still very easily tell the difference at a distance due to the accessories and differing head, leg, and foot wear.

In HL2: Raising the Bar, several Valve developers also expressed disdain for impractical-looking armor. Even if it was just an asthetic thing, don't you think the art team wouldn't have the rebels just not wear very helpful pieces of armor, and just one part of it? What's the in-universe explanation for that?

Yeah, but I think only in the chapters AFTER the battle of Nova Prospekt. It's darker and lacks the slight blue tint of the regular CP armour. He also doesn't wear a helmet, of course, which this subtle difference only reinforces. Barney IS a CP, and they still went out of their way to make him aesthetically different by altering his colour sheme and silhouette. And then they didn't put him in any chapters with CPs in them, just to make sure he wasn't confused for them.

I'll have to do a comparison later, because I did not notice that at all.

EDIT: random thing. Remember when we were talking about whether or not Gordon wore a helmet earlier? Well, I just remembered something that should give us the answer: the HUD. Gordon doesn't get one until he puts on the suit.

I just quoted you saying that III-A armor would protect against Combine pulse weapons. There's also this comment where you explicitly say the pulse rifle would be ineffective against enemies in armor:

The part you cut explicitly said that it does less damage because I have to COMBINE damage and penetration in-game. I have NO DOUBT of the OSIPR's power, and it's hard to completely stop a blast-type attack so it would affect stronger enemies at least a little, but any amount of armour can *reduce* blast damage. Heavy, thick, well-padded armour like those of the combine would be very effective against a blast. If none of the enemies in-game were armoured I would probably have assigned a higher value to the OSIPR's damage. And when I do a more in-depth mod, I will. (Probably 20.) But the downside is that any armoured enemy would take at least a little less damage from it.

And if you're so huge on vanilla damage values, consider that my original value for the pulse rifle was already significantly stronger than the original, and it's now almost twice the vanilla power and does more damage than the .357.

Wait, so you're assuming Combine future-armor is completely different from what modern soldiers would use? While that's not explicitly contradicted anywhere, I don't recall anything about it being different. It certainly didn't look futuristic, and in-game the Combine soldiers are given the exact same health as the marines from the first game (and we know that the value of a hit point is the same between games, as headcrabs, barnacles, and zombies all have the same health). You describing the Overwatch soldiers having the same in-game health as the marines ("how much health are the Overwatch soldiers supposed to have?"--->"150, same as the HECU marines"), as well as you not bringing up the "Future Armor" explanation when I asked you why 5.56 > pulse rifle shots earlier (you just said that the pulse rifle would be ineffective against armored enemies), didn't give me the impression you thought that Combine armor was wildly different.

All I'm assuming is that it functions the way it looks. And it looks like it's very well padded. Padding would A: Put space between the blast and the wearer, B: Disperse the energy of the blast and C: Insulate the wearer from the thermal component. All three translate to less damage from the blast. This should also reduce small-arms damage, but I have to keep the small arms doing decent damage for gameplay reasons. (And who's the say the small arms aren't using superior powder now, twenty years after the first game? It's as good an explanation as any.)

Again, we don't know if the pulse rifle deals damage by exploding.

Occam's razor.

I always assumed it used teleportation technology somehow going by the effect it produces (it's the same effect produced by the mini teleporter in Black Mesa East), and the animations for most of the other Combine pulse weapons (the guns on the Hunter and Strider, as well as the energy ball, disintegrate humanoid NPCs into nothingness with the same particle effect as the teleporter). I never said it would PENETRATE, just that it would be effective against heavily armored enemies, and it wouldn't necessarily have to penetrate to do that considering how weird Combine technology is. Which is supported by the game since, well, it is.

1. This has no in-game support.

2. No, it doesn't. Its impact blast has a similar colour to the light around the mini-teleporter, but it doesn't have any of the other visual effects.

3. All combine pulse weapons have the same animation.

4. There's nothing that says the energy ball is the same tech as the pulse rifle. In fact, lots of things contradict that.

A: They have wildly different flight characteristics.

B: The energy pellets are a different colour altogether.

C: The energy pellet container is totally different in design from that of the pulse rifle's magazine.

5. If it really was teleporting chunks of enemy out, which there's no evidence for and doesn't match anything in the game's visual effects and thus anybody with enough logic to understand Occam's Razor knows is bullshit to assume, it would actually be EVEN LESS EFFECTIVE against their heavily padded (thus very thick) armour. The added space between the user and the teleportation field would result in less of the teleported matter being from the target and more from the armour and would also mean the matter teleported out would be more superficial and thus less organ damage (likely none at all) would be done.

6. This was an argument about whether the pulse rifle could damage somebody's torso after hitting their arm, remember? Your idea of it being a teleportation weapon makes putting an arm out to stop it EVEN MORE EFFECTIVE since there's not going to be ANY effect from the pulse hitting the wearer's body now, where before there might be some fragmentation.

7. How exactly would synths resist it if it's teleporting chunks out of a target? If it really is, it should still deal at least a little damage to absolutely everything, even if very little.

8. Gordon's armour defeats the "teleporting" energy pellet and it does VERY little damage to him. How could it possibly do that if it's a teleporting weapon?

9. The energy pellet doesn't "teleport" most things it destroys. Even things like small cardboard boxes. Explain that, if you really think the energy pellet is a teleportation weapon. Actually, don't. There's no explanation for why it performs so wildly differently on different targets no matter WHAT model you use. Probably because the energy pellet is TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT.

Also, I just checked HL2, and this "explosion" doesn't leave scorch marks. Just "holes", like all the bullet-firing weapons. Where did you see scorch marks?

Seeing as I also remembered Alyx's gun having a blue muzzle flash and firing pulse projectiles, I'm just going to wait to respond to this until I actually get there. I'm in Ravenholm right now, won't be too long. Although I tried the airboat gun, also a pulse weapon, and found NO impact mark on ANY target, so it's clearly not teleporting chunks out, is it?

They deal less in-game damage than the Pulse Rifle, and don't actually produce more impressive effects by my eyes (the Pulse Rifle appears to produce significantly stronger recoil, for what that's worth). Assuming that pulse auto-turrets are SO MUCH stronger than the standard Combine service rifle, is there any reason why the Combine would stick these super-fuckawesome-guns on their turrets and leave their soldiers with pea-shooters weaker than pre-war firearms? The turret is not that big, it's very thin, and it produces next to no recoil, so surely it couldn't that hard to porduce something close in strength and give it to the soldiers, who already carry heavy bulky rifles? Also note that all other infantry-level Combine pulse weapons (ceiling turrets in the Citadel, autocannon equivalents in Episode 2, HMG-equivalents encountered in stationary fortifications, sniper rifle, etc.) all do significantly more damage than both the pulse rifle and the turret, so it's not like Valve just had something against the automated turrets doing that much damage. It wouldn't be at all disruptive for game balance, either.

 

Somewhat. The pulse turret only appears to have blown something in half because of the scenery; you're in a room and hear pulse turrets firing for a few seconds. You walk into the next room and see a pulse turret sitting near a hole in the wall. You knock over the turret and see two bodies piled up plus a pair of severed legs. Walking past the legs will reveal half of a zombie hiding under some rubble. You can see a similar scene (i.e. zombie torsos separated from legs) in a couple of other Combine outposts that don't have auto-turrets, just soldiers with pulse rifles.

Ah, there's the problem. I wasn't thinking of the same turret. I was thinking of the turrets from Episode 2, since you mentioned it blowing a zombie in half and the turrets in Episode 2 appear to have done exactly that.

Also, keep in mind there were multiple turrets shooting that zombie on full-auto with their silly-fast rate of fire. Also, it's a zombie, which is probably not nearly as hard to rip apart as a healthy human being.

They don't, actually. They make the .357 stronger than the M2 Browning, but that's not what you said. The two pistols are more like extreme outliers than anything else; aside from them, there's at least a bit of sense to the relative damages, even if they're not remotely realistic (e.g. HD pack assault rifle = 5, 7.62x51 = 10, .50 BMG = 20 (or 10) [depends on a couple of things], 25mm autocannon = 60; SMG = 4, pistol = 5, pulse rifle = 8, emplacement gun = 15). HL2's shotgun is another extremely weird case, but it's implied that there's something off about it and that it's not just firing regular buckshot, as Combine squad leaders are issued this gun instead of a logically-not-worthless-gun.

1. The .50 only does 20 in Black Mesa. It does 8 in Half-Life 1. Which is the same as a Glock 17, not more, but my point about their damage values being totally worthless still stands.

2. A shotgun wouldn't BE worthless against the unarmoured opponents the overwatch frequently tangles with.

But okay, Valve gets weird with damage values of real world weapons for the sake of balance. That's clear in several cases, mostly with the pistols and some of the vehicles. But why would that matter with completely fictional weapons? Since there are no cutscenes, or officially given numbers, or even much dialogue suggesting how the fictional HL weapons like the pulse rifle work, the relative damages in-game are one of the only things we have. While they're not conclusive by any means, they do give us an idea, as we have nothing else to really go on.

And I made the pulse rifle MORE powerful than it was in vanilla, and you're STILL complaining about it being too weak. MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MIND.

You're doing the same thing you did with the thornet gun, where you assume you know the limits of a completely fictional weapon in a series that plays fast and loose with real-world science, and then use those made-up limits to ignore the game and assume said weapon sucks, even though it's depicted as being effective in-universe.

I gave the thornet gun its damage value entirely for balance, then changed it when the balance changed, because I knew little about it. I also assumed it to be poison because that was the most likely option for it with how it was presented, JUST like I am now when I assume the pulse rifle to deal blast damage.

The thornet gun killed full-armored marines and even HEV-suited scientists,

1. It can still totally do both of those things.

2. There's no evidence the thornet gun EVER killed an HEV-suited scientist. None of the scientists are EVER found dead around grunts, and even if they were there's still the chance they were bludgeoned to death as the grunts are VERY strong.

and the pulse rifle was chosen as the standard weapon of the Overwatch rather than any old Earth firearm. Now, while that doesn't give us any specifics, it still would indicate that it's silly to suggest that the pulse rifle is significantly less effective against armor, even soft armor, than modern weapons. If that was the case, don't you think you'd see at least one Combine soldier armed with a regular rifle?

1. The overwatch mostly fight UNARMOURED opponents, and their loadout supports this. Penetration would not be a logical priority.

2. The weapon still works on an armoured opponent.

3. You're assuming you know the motivation of an alien empire in a video game. Maybe they use the pulse rifle because it's great against unarmoured enemies, or because it's hard for armour to completely stop it, and don't care that it isn't *AS* effective for those in between. Maybe they use the pulse rifle because for logistical reasons. Maybe they use the pulse rifle for its psychological effect. There are a LOT of reasons other than armour penetration to pick a weapon. Most of them are more important than armour penetration most of the time.

1. Every in-game source of damage draws blood (except for the explosives... I think?).

 

2. Where does it leave scorch marks?

 

3. No weapon penetrates through any NPC in any of the games.

 

4. Have you considered that it might just teleport away whatever it hits?

1. Wrong. Environmental damage sources don't draw blood, and neither do the attacks of a couple enemies. ONLY kinetic attacks draw blood.

2. My memory is not to be trusted, wait until I get there.

3. Actually, that's not true. The tau cannon (when charged) and combine sniper can both deal damage to an enemy close enough behind an object. They're the only weapons that can, though, and in the sniper rifle's case you basically have to be pressed up against the other target.

4. Yes, I have. Then I took Occam's Razor to that idea and threw away its mangled carcass because EVERY SINGLE OTHER EXPLANATION made more sense.

It is, in fact, a different weapon system, in the same way an autocannon and pistol are different weapon systems. That means, at one point, the Combine actually made the decision to make a human-compatible pulse weapon and standardized it. My question before was why even bother if it was apparently inferior to modern weapons in several areas? The Combine show that they have no problem just giving some of their troops regular bullet hoses.

1. You know what I fucking mean. There's no research involved, they just made it smaller, that's it.

2. It can go ahead and be inferior in several areas if it's superior in even one other. Guns, when first invented, were VASTLY inferior to bows and crossbows, and they still got REAL reasearch and REAL development just because they were loud and scary. Here, we have a weapon technology that already exists and has at least some valuable advantages, it just wouldn't be as effective against all the armoured enemies the Combine don't have.

3. There's no reason NOT to do it. Whether they want pulse weapons for greater stopping power against unarmoured targets, its ability to impact larger and better armoured targets (blast damage is harder to completely stop, it's just easier to partially reduce) that a rifle wouldn't do anything to, or just for logistical or psychological reasons, those are all very good reasons to mass produce them and start handing them out.

4. Who's the say the Combine don't issue regular rifles? They might also issue submachine guns other than the MP7, and pistols other than the Python and USP Match. They can have things and they not appear in-game. If Valve thinks "Well, they'd probably have that, but it'd really be superfluous to include it." they won't include it.

In HL2: Raising the Bar, several Valve developers also expressed disdain for impractical-looking armor. Even if it was just an asthetic thing, don't you think the art team wouldn't have the rebels just not wear very helpful pieces of armor, and just one part of it? What's the in-universe explanation for that?

1. Well why don't they use the fucking Overwatch vests then, huh? Those are clearly a lot better, so why not use those?

2. The in-universe explanation is the exact same as the gameplay reason. If they look like their enemy, they'll get shot by their own side.

3. The rebels wearing the armour are slightly bulkier than those that don't. It's possible their clothing is just really thick, but maybe they're wearing the jacket UNDER their sweaters, just so the sweaters will help reduce friendly fire incidents. The vest couldn't be, because of its size and shape, but the jacket could. And you know, this is the second time I have said that.

EDIT: random thing. Remember when we were talking about whether or not Gordon wore a helmet earlier? Well, I just remembered something that should give us the answer: the HUD. Gordon doesn't get one until he puts on the suit.

This is bullshit. Barney doesn't have a HUD until he puts on his armour either, and his helmet doesn't have a visor or any other means of producing a HUD. In fact, if you do it right you can pick up JUST the vest and you get the same effect without the helmet. This really isn't a good argument.

But just so you know, I've always been on the fence about his helmet's existence. And for that reason, I've always given him an in-between value for headshot damage. So can you stop bugging me about the helmet, please?

Also, just did an update that reduced headshot damage 20%. Not a big decrease, usually just means one more shot to kill, occasionally two. The most it can increase it by is (I think) for SMG rounds or shotgun flechettes (yes, I'm assuming they're flechettes now, but only because otherwise the current damage value makes NO sense) to the head of an overwatch elite, where this has increased the required number by 3. (From 12 to 15. For the shotgun, that means a double blast will no longer do it for an elite, which is the biggest difference.)

Also, for some reason, the shocktroopers in opposing force only take double headshot damage despite the setting being at 4 (previously 5), so I've decreased their health 20% to compensate. Male Black Ops are apparently immune to headshots entirely, so I've reduced their health 50% to compensate. But that's only for Opposing Force, so what do you care?

And I've got some ideas to pitch for the TC mod. I'll get on that now.

Okay, nothing big, but here are five gameplay-related ideas for the total conversion mod:

1. Sneak attack bonus. Most attacks that aren't area of effect deal double damage hitting targets from behind. Melee attacks, crossbow bolts and animal strikes do triple. The knife and headcrab bites do quadruple. These multipliers all also apply to the first hit on an inactive/unaware target. If this is also from behind, the multipliers do stack. (Thus making a hit on an inactive NPC from behind do 4x normally, 9x for melee, crossbows and animal strikes, and 16x for the knife or a headcrab.)

2. Special damage types will have special effects, at the expense of doing less damage than in the other mods.

A: Electric attacks will stun targets briefly. For instance, a vortigaunt's electric blast will deal 50 damage instead of 100, but will greatly weaken NPCs for 5 seconds. (-50% speed and melee damage, +100% weapon spread) This will also impact the player, except instead of a weapon spread increase the player will be blinded. A stun baton has the same effect, but only for 1 second.

B: Fire damage will deal extra damage over time. Some already do this, of course, but all of them will now and it'll impact the player.

C: Radiation damage will keep going for some time after exposure, but will no longer do any immediate damage. Overall this will be much deadlier, though.

D: Chemical damage deals a stun effect similar to the electric stun, only with a fixed 10 second duration and a variable magnitude. It slows movement and reduces melee damage by 1% and increases spread by 2% per point. Chemical attacks of large magnitude are rare, the antlion worker, bullsquid and spore are the only ones that deal chemical damage and the two animals both deal fairly low damage, and the effect DOES NOT stack.

E: Poison has the biggest change. Poison will damage you for a percentage of your *remaining* health. As you're not Gordon in this mod, you won't heal without medicine. Medical kits heal 5x as much poison damage as regular damage. Poison debuffs you -0.5% speed and melee damage and +1% spread for every 1% of health lost, (IE: being poisoned for half your health means losing 25% speed and melee damage and having 50% more spread) and this debuff persists until it is healed. Many enemies deal both poison damage and regular damage. Antlions deal 10, 15 or 20 regular damage on hit, and 10%, 15% or 20% poison damage. Antlion workers deal 10 acid damage and 10% poison damage. Only poison headcrabs and the hivehand fail to also deal normal damage. (50% and 20%, respectively.) Only headcrabs, zombies, antlions, synths and inanimate objects are immune to poison.

3. There will be new weapons, most fairly effective.

A: AR15. A semi-automatic 5.56x45mm rifle. Very accurate, very low recoil, very long range, deals full damage against almost all enemies, but its damage leaves something to be desired. (Damage and penetration will finally be totally separate, so this gun does very little against unarmoured targets and just manages to do full damage to all infantry instead of falling off. It even does full damage to antlion guards. Hunters take 0.75x damage from it and are the weakest enemies not to take full.)

B: MP5. A fully-automatic 9x19mm submachine gun. More recoil than the MP7, smaller magazine, slower rate of fire and doesn't penetrate armour as well, but does much more damage against unarmoured targets

C: Knife. Two thirds the damage of the crowbar with shorter reach. However, where other weapons deal double damage in a sneak attack or from behind and other melee weapons deal triple, it deals quadruple. It also doesn't make any noise, so it can't alert any enemy but the one you're hitting, who will usually die in one hit if you backstab them by surprise. Deals full damage to all zombies and most wildlife. (Most wildlife and all zombies take reduced damage from the crowbar and especially the wrench.)

D: Wrench. One third the damage of the crowbar, that's HALF the knife, with reach in between the two. However, it has a build-up attack useful as a big opening move that does four times normal damage. Deals full damage to all infantry. (Armoured infantry take reduced damage from the crowbar and especially the knife.)

E: Hivehand. Deals 20% poison damage on hit. Counted as a penetrating animal attack for resistance purposes. Infinite ammo, 8 shots, recharge much slower than previous installments (1/6s). Incapable of killing targets, but weakens them rather substantially in fairly short order. Used by grunts to make an enemy much less dangerous and easy to finish off, and is usually followed by charging and bludgeoning them to death. For you, I'd recommend using a quick burst from it to weaken them a LOT, then switching to a more lethal weapon. (Note: If the enemy has no resistance, this will reduce their health 83%, reducing their movement speed and melee damage 41.5% and increasing their spread 83%. Most enemies worth using this weapon on do resist it, but it's still a very fast and very effective opening move.)

F: Shockroach. Deals 10 electrical damage. One second debuff on hit. Infinite ammo, 9 shots, same recharge rate as hivehand but only recharges while equipped. Has a secondary "charged" mode that uses all 9 units of energy for a single shot that deals triple damage and has a three-second debuff.

G: Spore launcher. Deals 50 chemical damage. Slows the enemy and reduces their melee damage by 50% while increasing their spread by 100% for ten seconds. Highly ineffective against armoured opponents, and this lack of efficacy also reduces its debuff. Highly effective against zombies, and also especially debilitating.

H: M40A1. An alternative sniping tool to the crossbow, deals much less damage but is locational and more effective against especially heavy armour. Deals full damage to all infantry. High single-shot damage and headshot capability combine to allow for extremely high sneak attack damage, especially from behind targets. The only infantryman capable of surviving a sneak attack, to the head and from behind, is the overwatch elite, and only on hard when you're not using the scope.

I: Tau cannon. Very powerful weapon that deals full damage to almost all enemies. Its charged attacks can even damage synths and vehicles. Uses rare uranium ammunition, more efficient (but lower DPS and a long delay) when charged, especially damaging to vehicles when using charged attacks. Deals about half as much damage at full charge as a rocket, twice as much to a strider (striders take 1/4 rocket damage, but now have 1000 health to a gunship's 3000, which still means 4 rocket hits instead of 3), and unlike the rocket cannot be shot down. Unlike the prototype, it cannot overcharge and will never injure the user. Two fully charged shots (20% of your ammo) will kill a strider on hard.

J: Satchel charge. Equal power to a hopper, placed and detonated by the player. Deals exactly enough damage to one shot an overwatch trooper, after resistance. But that'll never actually happen because it's a blast and the damage will fall a little before it hits them. For best results, place alone for CPs (except riot), in pairs for overwatch or riot CPS, and in trios for elites. Make sure not to detonate on riot CPs with shields until they're past it or you'll hit their shield and only do half as much damage.

4. Enemies now have harsh resistances to attack. Just a few examples.

A: Citizens (25HP) take 3/4 damage from buckshot, chemicals and bites, normal damage from everything else.

B: Metrocops and rebels (50HP) take 1/2 damage from buckshot, chemicals and bites, 3/4 damage from 9mm bullets, knives, penetrating and energy animal attacks and 40mm grenades, and normal damage from everything else.

C: Special "riot" metrocops (50HP) take no damage at all from bites and chemicals, 1/4 damage from buckshot, knives, penetrating and energy animal attacks and 40mm grenades, 1/2 damage from 9mm bullets, the crowbar and blunt animal strikes, 3/4 damage from crossbow bolts, .357 bullets, low-power pulse rounds and grenades, normal damage from everything else.

D: Overwatch troopers (75HP) take 1/4 damage from buckshot, chemicals and bites, 1/2 damage from 9mm rounds, knives, penetrating and energy animal attacks and 40mm grenades, 3/4 damage from .357 bullets, low-power pulse rounds, the crowbar and blunt animal strikes, normal damage from everything else.

E: Overwatch elites (100HP) take no damage at all from buckshot, chemicals and bites, 1/4 damage from 9mm bullets, knives, penetrating and energy animal attacks and 40mm grenades, 1/2 damage from .357 bullets, low-power pulse rounds, the crowbar and blunt animal strikes, 3/4 damage from crossbow bolts, 4.6mm bullets and grenades, normal damage from everything else.

F: Houndeyes (20HP) take 3/4 damage from the wrench, physics objects, bites, energy animal attacks and blunt animal strikes and normal damage from everything else.

G: Bullsquids (160HP) take 1/4 from chemicals, 1/2 damage from the wrench, physics objects, bites and blunt animal strikes, 3/4 damage from the crowbar, penetrating and penetrating animal strikes and normal damage from everything else. Immune to poison.

H: Zombies (60HP) take 1/4 damage from the wrench, physics objects, bites and blunt animal strikes, 1/2 damage from the crowbar and penetrating animal strikes, 3x damage from fire and energy animal attacks, 2x damage from buckshot and chemicals, 1.5x damage from 9mm bullets, normal damage from everything else. Immune to poison.

I: Gonomes (80HP) take 1/4 damage from the wrench, physics objects, bites and blunt animal strikes, 1/2 damage from the crowbar and penetrating animal strikes, 2x damage from fire and energy animal attacks, 1.5x damage from chemicals, normal damage from everything else. Immune to poison.

J: Antlion workers (30HP) take 1/2 damage from buckshot, chemicals and animal bites, 3/4 damage from 9mm bullets, knives, penetrating animal attacks and 40mm grenades, normal damage from everything else. Immune to poison.

K: Antlion soldiers (30HP) take 1/4 damage from buckshot, chemicals and animal bites, 1/2 damage from 9mm bullets, knives, penetrating animal attacks and 40mm grenades, 3/4 damage from .357 bullets, the crowbar, low-power pulse rounds and blunt animal strikes, normal damage from everything else. Immune to poison.

L: Antlion guards (900HP) take no damage at all from buckshot, chemicals and animal bites, 1/4 damage from 9mm bullets, knives, penetrating animal attacks and 40mm grenades, 1/2 damage from .357 bullets, the crowbar, low-power pulse rounds and blunt animal strikes, 3/4 damage from crossbow bolts, 4.6mm bullets and grenades. Immune to poison.

M: Hunters (100HP) take no damage at all from buckshot, chemicals and 9mm bullets, 1/4 damage from .357 bullets and animal bites, 1/2 damage from knives, penetrating and energy animal attacks, 4.6mm bullets, low-power pulse rounds and 40mm grenades, 3/4 damage from crossbow bolts, the crowbar, blunt animal attacks and 5.56mm bullets, and normal damage from everything else. Immune to poison.

Got the basic idea on the resistances? Moving on.

5. Your rebel character is very vulnerable to start with, and increases in resistance to damage later in the game.

A: When you start, you don't have any body armour. Now, as a protagonist you're still unusually durable (100HP), but you have citizen resistances, take double damage and can't have any armour points.

B: Soon, you join the rebellion proper and are issued the standard issue armour of the rebels. You now have rebel resistances and you can have 100 armour points, but still take double damage.

C: Following Freeman's raid on Nova Prospekt, things pick up and you get a powered combat vest, the same type that was once worn by Adrian Shephard. This means you finally take normal damage, and have a unique set of resistances. These resistances are comparable to an overwatch elite for the most part. It provides markedly better bullet resistance (you are immune to everything up to the .357, the 4.6 only does 1/4 damage, the 5.56 only does 1/2 and the 7.62 only does 3/4) but is weaker against energy and pulse attacks (1/2 from energy animal attacks, 3/4 damage from low-power pulse rounds, nothing else resisted). This is the best armour you'll ever get. This suit can finally be recharged with batteries and wall chargers.

That's all I've got for now. How's it sounding so far?

Lets try to keep the conversation civil, everyone. Remember that video games aren't always going to be totally realistic, and even attempts to make such things more realistic are going to be inherently problematic when dealing with things that don't actually exist, even if they're based on something that does exist. Taking these things too far and too seriously may be all fun and games until all the actual facts are exhausted and people start delving into conjecture and getting into the the debates of opinions where everyone is right and everyone is wrong. And then come the personal insults and THEN it gets messy and there's forum warnings and so on. No one wants that, right?

I will actually say that the amount of detail being gone into here does scare me somewhat.

I will actually say that the amount of detail being gone into here does scare me somewhat.

The argument or one of the mods?

I will actually say that the amount of detail being gone into here does scare me somewhat.

 

The argument or one of the mods?

The intense detailed discussion of hypothetical weaponry and so on.

The intense detailed discussion of hypothetical weaponry and so on.

That could also be either.

Alright, in the .cfg mod for Half-Life 2, I have just fought my first gunship. Let me tell you about how this went.

Attempt #1:

Ran upstairs a bit nervous. Full health, no armour charge. I figured I'd use the rocket to distract the gunship, keep it from shooting at me. I fired out away from it and guided the rocket back to get its attention, and that worked. I nailed it with the rocket, knocked it for a loop, and it promptly one-shotted me with its cannon. Then I paused to have a little drinky.

Attempt #2:

Alright, that didn't go well. As soon as the rocket hits I need to duck into cover. So let me fire and... It's ignoring the rocket ENTIHURGHFUCKBLEGH. *THUD*

Attempt #3:

Okay, make sure it's shooting at the rocket before going out, then duck back into cover as soon as it hits. Okay, good. Hit it, didn't get killed. Maybe I should stop and quickSHIT! *THUD*

Attempt #4:

Right. Okay. Gunship moves around, holes in the roof, forgot that. Let's try again. Okay, good. There's a hit. It's going for the OHSHITOHFUCKOHSHITOHFUCK! Okay... Down the stairs safely. Fire again out through the hole in the roof, guide from... Well, there goes a rocket. Try out the front of the building now... And another hit. And it's going back out and... IGNORING THE ROCKET. *RATATATAT* *THUD*

Attempt #5:

Okay. Play it safe. There's a hit. There's another hit... NEVERMIND! It's... SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT! Okay. Didn't hit me, and... It's following the rocket, good... And a second hit. Real quick third one before it turns around... And DOWN it goes! FINALLY! HAHA! WOO! It only took FIVE times, but I got it! And then the euphoria wore off as I realized I was still without armour charge (thus effectively at half health) with barely any ammo left, and only at New Little Odessa. Clearly, it was time for another drink.

So, why am I telling you this? For two reasons. The first is I wanted to share my experience with this. The second is to explain why I am considering reducing the power of the gunship's main gun. I'll decide if I am, and if so how much, after the battle at Nova Prospekt. The gunship totally rocking my shit is perfectly realistic, I assure you, but I might need to restrict it for gameplay reasons.

Also, I wasn't sure I handled the HL2 mod properly until I got to the fights with the Overwatch. Now that I have, I do have to say I nailed it. They perform almost exactly how I want them to. Which is to say they're about as forgiving as a roomful of Australian border patrol guards that all came off a low fat diet this morning.

So, as I've mentioned, I have a total conversion mod I'm planning for Half-Life 2. And now, I have written the plot. Feedback appreciated.

Binding Energy:

It has been over a week since Nova Prospekt was hit, and it's still contested. Your character, a female Nova Prospekt prisoner (she needs a name, but I suck at names), awakens to find her containment pod has stopped working just in time for it to hit the ground, injuring her (only 20%). Meanwhile, gunshots and the death rattles of headcrabs and a zombie are heard. A badly injured male prisoner calls out her name, crawling to the pod. He pulls the damaged pod open and pulls her out, pausing to frantically shoot a zombie to death. He's introduced at this point as her older brother. He stands, barely, and starts limping towards the door. He explains that his pod was damaged like hers and a zombie tore it open, but the thing broke his leg before he could kill it. He needs you to find him some medicine, and points to a guard post across from him. He tells you the door is locked, and he can't get into the air vent with his leg broken. He gives you a combat knife he recovered from a dead prison guard to get the grate open. As you climb up towards the ventilation shaft, you can see a strange man in a suit is in the guard post. He's not there when you reach the other side, yet the doors all remain shut. In the guard office, there will be three medical kits and a pistol with one magazine of ammunition. There's no enemies in here, and once you disable the lock it's a straight shot back to him. Just heal yourself (only takes 2) and bring him a med kit. Once he's used it, he'll stand back up and limp his way to the door. He'll limp all the way out of the prison.

Make your way down the hall. Your brother will kill any headcrabs he encounters with his pistol, but he takes too long to defeat zombies (they take one shot to the head, but eight to the chest and he's not very accurate in his present condition) so you'll have to use your knife if your pistol runs out of ammo. (Your knife deals 20 damage to them, and will kill in three hits. Frankly, it's pretty weak. But if you can get them from behind or by surprise before they activate, you can one-shot them.) Be careful, in the unlikely event a zombie actually hits you it will deal extremely heavy damage. (On hard, its two-handed downward swing can one-shot you and the one-handed swing takes off half your health.) At the end of the chapter, you'll find an abandoned (and very familiar) security station with two destroyed turrets and two available submachine guns. (Yes, it's the same station you defend with turrets in Half-Life 2.) Your brother finds the computer's security has been forcefully compromised (by Alyx a week before) and finds a way out. Unfortunately, it's being guarded by a combine elite, standing right in the room where Gordon killed an antlion guard, surrounded by dead antlions. Your brother isn't sure how getting past him is going to be possible, but it's the only way. He decides to come up with a plan on the way.

White Giant:

From here, you follow Gordon's trail backwards through the facility, encountering mostly antlions. Your brother still needs help, but since you both have submachine guns the antlions aren't very hard to kill and there aren't very many. Your brother discusses strategy for killing the elite at every break. He points out that the elite was carrying a shotgun instead of a pulse rifle, so his rifle must have run out of ammo while he was fighting the antlions. A shotgun isn't nearly as dangerous to you as a pulse rifle, not by a LONG shot, but you still can't take him head-on or he'll rip you to pieces. Your brother can't figure out a way in time, at least not that he tells you. When you get to the end, he takes a deep breath and tells you to sneak up on the elite and use your knife, he'll distract him. He sets down his weapons, and calls out to the elite with his hands up, saying he isn't trying to escape and just wants to go safely back into custody. The elite approaches him, weapon trained on his head, trying to contact dispatch about what to do with this. And then you sneak up and stab the fucker. He bashes you (40 damage, knocks you back) and shoots your brother in the chest. He moves to finish off your downed brother with a shot to the head, but you can kill him first if you move fast enough.

Either way, your brother isn't going to make it. Now you have to make your way out of the facility alone. The immediate difference between preventing the headshot and not preventing it is that if you prevent it, he gives you more detailed instructions. He's already told you earlier in the chapter where to go, a resistance outpost near City 17, but if you prevent the headshot he'll tell you how to find a tunnel his group had dug trying to break into the prison, letting you skip half of the next chapter and giving you access to a supply stash, before telling you to leave him behind. As if to rush you, the wall nearby starts cracking, and he tells you to leave before the antlions get through. It breaks as soon as you're too far to return.

Escape velocity:

Escape the prison through the hole Gordon entered through. The man with the suit will, once more, be seen up on the catwalk to your right as you exit the hole. If your brother lived long enough, he'll tell you about a tunnel the resistance had been digging trying to break into Nova Prospekt, the very crime that got him locked up here, and you can take it from the prison's drainage system to a building at the bottom of the cliffs. You'll arrive in a locked supply closet, giving some medicine, ammunition and early access to an AR15. Find the other side of the tunnel, and take it from there all the way to a rebel outpost.

If your brother didn't live long enough, you'll have to make your way down the cliffs and through a bunker. No soldiers, but there's plenty of headcrabs. Once at the bottom, head through a broken building at the bottom (the one Gordon walks past right before he reaches the cliffs) and follow it. You'll find a tunnel through the wall boarded up (same tunnel as the other method) and down to the same rebel outpost. This path doesn't allow you to reach the supply stash, and since you had to fight headcrabs (well, not really "fight", per se) you expended more ammunition and will likely be injured. It also takes much longer.

Cruising speed:

The outpost is fairly small. One rebel (he also needs a name and I still suck at them), one crowbar, one crossbow and a very familiar airboat, sporting a very familiar automatic scatter-cannon. He claims to have escaped from the destruction of Black Mesa East in that airboat and just stumbled across the place. Take the airboat with him, it's an easy trip to your destination with no combat until you pass Shorepoint. The only downside is that the airboat is only supposed to seat one and one can imagine how awkward sitting on his lap must be, considering you've just met. You'll be manning the turret while he drives. Your entire path is scripted, and for a while the only things you see are antlions on the shore you can use as target practice. Soon, you connect to the canal system. As you pass the dam, you should be able to see the man in the suit up on it. From there, you begin encountering Civil Protection and mowing them down with the airboat cannon. The route diverges from Freeman's after the same outpost that airboat received its cannon at, and soon you reach the outpost you intended to. And it's totally abandoned. The power isn't even on when you arrive, and it's infested with zombies. It was clearly shelled recently, though, since it was working the day Black Mesa East was destroyed.

Xen Relay:

All seems lost, but the rebel you're with says he's going to try to get everything working anyway. The rebel you met is a bit of an egghead, as he's explained on the trip. He was just an assistant at Black Mesa East, but he learned a lot. He couldn't build a teleport device, but he thinks with Kleiner's notes he might be able to repair the existing one. Maybe. He hopes. He needs you to get the main generator back online, while he works on the damaged teleporter. He also tells you to find yourself some armour while you're at it.

First, you head to the armoury if you're smart, because it's a long way down to the generator room and there are... things... in the way. Well, really just a lot of headcrabs and zombies. Regular zombies, fast zombies, poison zombies, even the elusive gonome. And the special headcrab for each. (Yes, gonomes now have a unique headcrab as well. It isn't very different from the regular one, really.) The armoury path isn't exactly safe, but there's only regular zombies and headcrabs in that area. The armoury itself provides rebel armour, an MP5 and a Python, with plenty of ammunition in .357 and 12 gauge. The generator room will be more accessible afterwards, now that your resistances are so much stronger and you have armour points. (Replenish armour points with vests. Vests can be found in pre-set locations, and fully replenish your armour points.)

Once you return, get in the teleporter and teleport to your destination: A large rebel facility in New Mexico.

Calculation Error:

You're in Xen. You're in fucking XEN. Your buddy fucked up, the relay didn't happen. You're stranded in some place in Xen. According to him, there's an old beacon or something that he failed to account for, and you're near it. He suggests heading to it, but only because he has no idea what else to do right now.

This is the same area Barney went through in Blue Shift. The only enemies here are wildlife, with the occasional odd, spike-shooting monster and some very large humanoids firing blue electric balls at you. Pit drones and shock troopers. Here, you can obtain the shock roach and spore launcher, and you meet a grunt fighting a pair of shock troopers supported by a quartet of pit drones. Its ranged weapon can only weaken enemies and can't actually kill them, the electric shots are stunning it so it can't avoid the spikes or escape, and the enemies are all in places it can't reach. It will die unless you intervene. If the grunt survives, it will take you to a vortigaunt it was separated from, who will thank you for saving his compatriot and will guide you to the device you're searching for, and along the way you'll acquire a hivehand. If the grunt doesn't survive, you once again have to take the long way and miss the hivehand, though the vortigaunt will still find you at the device as a controller is hovering overheard relaying information to it. There is no second hivehand, make sure that grunt survives.

Once at the device, the vortigaunt will communicate with its kin to get the portal open. Return to Earth through the portal (this time right at the device) and find yourself in New Mexico. For real this time. And to make that even better, the Xenians come with you.

Military Precision:

At the rebel base in New Mexico, you'll meet a group of rebels. They introduce themselves as the remnants of the USMC, and mostly the trainees of the remnants of the USMC. They explain to you what the plan was. Basically, they were staging an assault on Nova Prospekt, but every single step of the plan failed. The teleporter didn't work and they didn't manage to access the supply cache until after their dig team, your brother included, was captured without ever getting all the way in. Now they no longer need to assault Nova Prospekt, but they did locate the base they needed to raid and the teleporters are working. And they have something even better they can do.

The citadel in City 17 has exploded, and they've been in contact with Magnusson, who has explained to them a way to drain energy off of the forming super-portal to slow its development through repeated teleportations. He recommends using their devices to teleport their trapped Xenian allies to Earth, and to teleport their own troops and supplies to where they're needed as well. And like that, it's time to enter the sealed section of this hidden military base. What used to be the HECU deployment base.

Hazardous Environments:

Once inside the armoury you find it filled with poison gas (deals poison damage, slowly) and overrun by Pit Drones. It isn't long before you also find Shock Troopers. Making your way down, you manage to clear out the facility and get access to the armoury. There, you get the AR15 if you didn't have one, an M40A1 and some new armour. A PCV. It's universally superior to what you've been wearing, is especially resistant to gunfire and it halves the special effects of all special damage types. Soon after, you discover that in addition to an armoury, there's also a motor pool. And unfortunately for you, you're the one who has to go through the back routes so the others can directly access it as nobody else can fit through the air ducts. Once that's open, you return to the main area to find them teleporting out troops and supplies en masse... And the combine has noticed.

The facility is under attack. One APC full of civil protection, one hunter-chopper, and undoubtedly more on the way. You are now given a rocket launcher. You, your buddy, the xenian trio and a single squad of marines have to fight through the CPs to reach the door, and then take out the hunter-chopper so they can get the vehicles out of the motor pool safely. Your squad and the trio from Xen keeps the CPs occupied while you proceed to the roof to destroy a hunter-chopper. The man in the suit is visible on the other side of the (very large) roof as you reach the top, but he heads down the stairs on that side when you see him. The stairs he went down are, notably, blocked completely by rubble when you reach them. After that, the vehicles can roll out of the motor pool and get prepared for the next wave. Head downstairs to get properly equipped, as the soldiers now give you something new. A gift teleported in from Dr. Kleiner for your assistance. A personal tau cannon. It's exceptionally powerful, but it only has 100 units of ammo and you'll never get a chance to replenish it so you need to make it count. They explain the plan, and it's pretty simple. They're sending you to attack the local centre of power, a secondary citadel. Once inside, you'll find your way to their reactor. Your buddy will install a device that will detonate the reactor of the citadel and prevent it from ever being used to create a super-portal. According to the marine companion, these pushes are being made at *all* of the secondary citadels.

You've Got Hostiles:

It's time to strike at the combine. The motorpool has its vehicles up and running. You get in the back of an LAV and roll out after a local combine military base in force. You deploy just in time to see a strider being felled by an Abrams tank, and advance on the walls through a city full of synths. The man in the suit is visible in the window of a building as you exit the LAV. But the citadel's defensive walls seem impenetrable. There's a massive series of green flashes inside the outer walls, the turrets go still, and soon a gargantua comes smashing through the main gate. And now you head inside, escorting the gargantua, defending it from striders, on its way to breach the inner gates and let you in.

Chain Reaction:

It's time to kill a citadel. Once inside, proceed downstairs towards the generator. You will meet heavy resistance, and the gargantua won't be following you, but the Xenians are giving them some trouble and you have a full squad to help you out. Once you're in the lower regions, you and your squad need to defend your friend while he installs the device. There are a LOT of soldiers coming in to stop you, but you set up three lines of defence and between you, four allies, four reprogrammed turrets and a LOT of hoppers you seem to have it in the bag until the elites show up, blast down your turrets and push you right back to the second line. And then, of course, the second line of defence (hopper mines and satchel charges) fails as well due to the sheer numbers and determination of the combine, now augmented by elites. Things look hopeless as they start breaching the door to the main chamber, until the Xenians arrive. Now with your forces augmented by four vortigaunts, four grunts and four controllers, the combine get slaughtered when they enter and you push right back out through them to escape, device planted.

Isolation:

Once you're out, the LAV comes under fire from a gunship. It crashes and you're barely out of the city, entirely too close to the explosion when it happens. The explosion knocks the gunship out of the sky and tosses your LAV. When you make your way out, you find yourself alone again, everybody else is dead, including the man you've been with the whole time. You make your way up the hill and back to the station, now badly wounded, as hunters approach. The man in the suit is visible, back inside the town, watching you from the destroyed upper level of a house. The entire upper level he's standing in has been destroyed. You find a rebel outpost with some medical supplies, but no ammo or armour. There's no more ammo or armour (though you got your vest fully recharged at the crashed LAV) for the entire game. This trip is long and lonely. There's no allies, no ammunition, no armour, very few medical supplies and plenty of enemies. Hunters, overwatch, civil protection, zombies, antlions, bullsquids, houndeyes, even some Race X creatures towards the end. When you finally get there, you get into the base and find the place deserted. Everybody else left without you, thinking you were dead. This base is cleaned out and abandoned, and other than some curious wildlife it's empty. You make your way to the teleporter and find it still ready, and teleport out.

Full Circle:

But something gets fucked up again... You think. You're in Nova Prospekt, back in the same room you started in. And there's nobody there. Nothing. Not even the sound of fighting. Just silence. You walk, following the same path from the beginning of the game, right to the room where your brother died.

Or did he? If you saved your brother from being shot in the head at the beginning of the game, he'll actually be here waiting for you. He'll reach out to hug you, having heard what you'd done, and slowly staggers along with you outside. Otherwise, you'll make this trip alone. Outside, you'll find the rest of the rebels you've met, who have taken over Nova Prospekt. The man in the suit can be seen on a guard tower. Everybody is watching as the super portal closes and the credits roll.