Seattleite

Quit trying to kill the thread.

That was a legitimate question. Gender is 100% mental. Only sex is physical.

If every time you tried to find some peace & quiet, or some alone time, you ended up getting loads of people swarming you and trying to get you to do something for them?

I am already there.

If you had immense disposable income, so much that if you waited one week you'd have so much that no matter how much you gave away you could never hurt your standard of living at all? (By the way, hundreds of thousands of people in the world have that much income and just sit on it.)

If you think that six hours of sleep is really bad and want to complain about that to real insomniacs, do us all a favour and hit Alt-F4.

Wait, the PASGT's plates were less shitty than the old RBA ones? I thought you said they were the same?

I meant they were less shitty than the older PASGT plates.

Keep in mind that's only for the ISAPO, and the source where that number comes from is dated 1999. There may have been more produced in preparation for the Aghanistan War, which is why I asked you.

There's a 7-year gap in my knowledge. It's 1996-2003. I looked into the years before because of Somalia and the first Iraq war. After because of the second Iraq war and our involvement afterwards in Afghanistan. Don't bother asking me what happened in 1996-2003 with body armour. I'd have to look it up, and have been looking it up, and you can do the same yourself.

Well of course soft armor won't stop a rifle (discounting extreme circumstances). I was more wondering why it was so underpowered against shrapnel.

Because kevlar is soft, and provides negligible resistance to sharp objects. They cut it with scissors, dude. And not big industrial scissors either, regular ones.

Also, do you have any images of the plate that made the armor III-A, or text mentioning its existence? I've never heard of it.

Funny thing, I looked into it, and the armour was somehow III-A on its own. The source that said it had CFRP plates was full of shit. Or maybe the new source is. For the record, the only modern armours I've ever worn myself were civilian-issue, except for once each RBA and OTV. So those are the (modern) armours I know the most about. I get ALL my information on armours other than civilian, historical, RBA and OTV from online sources. Online sources you could find yourself if you looked, you know. Hate to hammer that in, but this discussion is wearing on me. I am not an expert, I am a hobbyist, and I divide my attention amongst all things martial past and present. You can likely get all the information I can at any point.

I did. I'll probably have something to say about them tomorrow. It might devolve into more talk about body armor I'll post some thoughts in the relevant thread.

That'd be best.

Do you mean gender, or sex? They are very, very, VERY much not the same thing.

I know, I thought that the original RBA vests weren't designed to hold two plates. Apparently they were, but some troops just wouldn't get back plates.

The RBA armour didn't change, only the plates did. And several rangers during the battle of Mogadishu that had back plates died because they were discarding them. Before the deployment in Somalia and during the early stages they weren't issued, they started before the battle but some marines didn't take the new plates out with them once they were and got killed in that unexpected clusterfuck. I don't get it. Who decides "Well, they're giving me something to fix my armour's biggest flaw, but nah, I think I'll save a couple pounds."?

Sorry, I was talking about the RBA.

 

Huh. I guess that'd firmly establish them as a good bit inferior. Were those newer plates the ones used in 2005-ish, or the updated ones used after 2007? And do you have any estimate for how the older plates would hold up to 7.62x39 and 5.56, or is that just impossible to guess without actually seeing a test?

 

Okay, that makes sense. So the armored plates used in rifle-resistant body armor weren't really updated up until 2003, when the standard body armor of the US military was swapped?

Kinda. RBA got updated first to plates equal to the OTV vest's plates in the mid '90s. PASGT got shit plates at least better than their old shittier plates, then a limited run of OTV-style plates that didn't accomplish anythin due to low numbers until the interceptor armour replaced it.

And as tired as I am, I could not make a good guess on much of anything right now and I don't care to look up a demonstration like I normally do. Maybe in the morning.

Huh... if it was III-A, then why is it remembered as being so lousy?

Because III-A is useless against rifles at most ranges and angles, and the "shrapnel protection" really only applied to the plate and nowhere else. It really was heavily underpowered for its purpose.

So, superior the last stock/RBA plates? Alright. Were rifle-proof plates standard for every troop deployed in combat, then, even before the 2003, e.g. in Afghanistan? Did the military have that much?

If the numbers were 4000, I doubt it.

I remember reading about a type of hard armor that would only stop one or two rifle shots. I thought it was the IBA, but I guess it must have been the RBA.

Dude, I don't even know right now. I'll check it tomorrow.

I know, I was wondering if anyone had done a test proving that result, or if one person just happened to shoot someone with a .50 BMG weapon in a recent conflict involving body armor.

Tests proving the armour stops the bullet aren't that hard. I showed one, couldn't find the really good one though, and there's likely more out there. But tests that show how the bullet performs when it hits somebody wearing it don't exist. Nobody is going to do that kind of test. Nobody is willing to stand in front of a .50, and telling them "it's okay, I know it looks like it'll kill you but we think it'll just break a rib and rupture your lung" doesn't help.

And no, I have nothing on friendly-fire incidents with .50 bullets where the soldier was only hit once *and* was hit in the chest. Do you realize how unlikely that is?

Also, I hate to be so forward, but you checked out the health and damage scores I posted, right? I mean, you asked for them, I want to make sure I didn't put them all up for nothing.

As a person who goes without sleep for days at a time on a weekly basis, I can sympathize.

As for me, I came here to complain about the Steam in-game browser's habit of refreshing pages every time you change tabs, which fucks Youtube up the ass, but on second thought I'll complain about a lack of sleep too. Because I have NO FUCKING REASON to not be sleeping during the week anymore and I still can't do it.

That's weird, some of the sources I've read seem to imply that they just didn't have back armor. Such as this one:

 

http://inquirer.philly.com/packages/somalia/nov27/default27.asp

 

Then again, the source mentions earlier that one of the men took out his back plate, so I guess the guy at the end did the same. Still... pictures like this (http://i47.servimg.com/u/f47/13/87/79/34/captur37.jpg) gave me the impression that they just didn't have back plates initially. Unless they're just complete hogwash, of course.

I don't know if you know, but inlaid plates have to be accounted for in the design. They couldn't build a vest without them and then suddenly decide to issue them because then there'd be no place to put them.

And yeah, I see a source now that says that the back plates the armour was BUILT to have just weren't being issued. Fucking cheap bastards.

So the plates used in 1993 were inferior to the ones used later? By how much (e.g. how many 5.56/7.62x39 rounds could they take compared to 2003-era plates)? And were the plates used for the RBA still used at all past 1993, or were they all immediately discarded?

I see three questions here.

1. This is a little ambiguous. Do you mean for RBA or PASGT? Yes in either case.

2.

A. For the ranger armour? I don't rightly know. They did show that after being hit once with a 7.62x51 it was unable to stop a second one, though. The newer plates stopped the first, second and third shots.

B. For PASGT? The older plates only made it IIIA, and would be penetrated by any rifle. The newer plates post-1993 made it III, and would stop a rifle a grand total of once and wouldn't reliable against a second shot.

C. I don't know. But given the basically identical performance of the older RBA plates and the newer PASGT plates I am inclined to believe they were the same ones or at least the same model, but I'd have to look.

Wait, it was originally issued with plates? What kind of plates? I thought that they just issued the vest and helmet itself for most troops up to 2003, making it II-A/II.

It was NIJ-II without, but it had spaced for inlaid plates and they issued shitty inlays similar to those of police vests that made it III-A, the exact same level as police vests. This was later traded out for ones suspiciously similar to RBA SAPI plates.

So, rifle-proof plates were standard and common for the PASGT in the late 90s and early 2000s? On Google Books, there is a document called "Protection Equipment and Counter Measure Devices: Congressional Hearing". Dated 1999, it states that up to '96, the standard armor of the US military was only meant to protect against fragmentation, and that the military had procured 4,000 ISAPOs for the PASGT armor to be distributed as needed to American forces before the introduction of Interceptor armor. The same information is parroted on various websites.

And that's referring to a later run of stronger plates that could actually do the job more than once. Something better than the old SAPI-style plates the PASGT was using up to that point.

That's probably what I was referring to. Were standard rifle-proof plates deployed before that, and were they closer to the old ranger plates or the Iraq-era plates in quality?

I looked, and they seem to be (as far as I can see) identical to SAPI plates. Which were the old insert plates for RBA before the battle of Mogadishu. Those only stop one bullet reliably, and for further shots it's a total crapshoot.

I'm again racking my head trying to make sense of some things that shouldn't really have to make sense, but do you think it might be plausible that many of the soldiers in Freeman's Mind (not HL, as they all have the same health and are supposed to be top quality) just weren't wearing rifle-proof plates? That would go with Freeman's comment about the soldiers at Black Mesa being "what's left" after the deployments overseas, anyway...

That's possible. They are VERY stupid, after all. But even after all that, I still find it unlikely Freeman could stop them with the number of shots he's using.

Sorry, I was talking about 7.62x39mm, just about the most likely small arms threat the average soldier would be facing in Somalia, Iraq, or Afghanistan. And half a dozen? For standard Interceptor armor? Damn. I was thinking it would take 4. Blunt force trauma wouldn't significantly effect them at all then? What about the enhanced plates in the IOTV, how many hits could they take?

Not really. Bullets don't have the mass to function as blunt weapons. They have plenty of energy, but very little momentum. They might cause some minor lung damage, but no more than a hard slap to the chest would do. Repeating that a could times wouldn't change anything, it's not enough.

Strange, all the pictures I've seen of it has it with side plates (e.g.http://cdn2.armslist.com/sites/armslist/uploads/posts/2013/04/01/1375808_02__body_armor_iotv_with_esapi_es_640.jpg). I guess those aren't designed to stop rifle rounds?

I must be getting the IOTV and OTV confused on that one.

So, according to you, a .50 BMG (assuming it's just a normal ol' .50 BMG, not armor piercing) hitting a soldier wearing modern body armor would shatter the plate, but still "only" take the wearer out of combat and significantly wound them, possibly killing them but also possibly letting them live with quick medical attention? I don't DISbelieve that, but... I'd just like a source that shows that happening.

It's impossible to find a source for something that never happens. Our soldiers aren't being shot at with .50, you know.

So let me get this straight:

 

In Half Life, no soldier should be able to die if they are shot in the armor, ever? Even when using US manufactured assault weapons* and .50 cal guns?

 

*Said weapons being ARs, MP5's, Shotguns, and others?

That is NOT what I fucking said, and if you're so STUPID you can't UNDERSTAND what I have ALREADY EXPLAINED AT LENGTH MULTIPLE TIMES, then I am NOT going to bother explaining it again.

There hasn't even been one?

Not as far as I am aware, no. Even games like ARMA assume armour is totally worthless.

Keep in mind that I was combining this with my other theories in the context of justifying the events of Freeman's Mind (an HK53 would have no trouble going through III-A armor). As for Half-Life itself, as I said, I like to assume that the HD pack was "canon", both because it looks better (aside from the shotgun and pistol) and because a few small things make more sense (more sensible main weapon for the marines, bullsquids get spikes on their tails, Grunts seem to have a bit more armor).

The only issues I have with this are:

A: The MP5 is a perfectly sensible weapon for the marines. They are going into CQB, expecting predominately unarmoured targets. They would be using a weapon well-suited for that, and the MP5 is very, very well-suited for that. While them also brining along carbines would make sense, the MP5 present and their primary weapon for the circumstance is entirely logical.

B: The HD pack STILL has the M4 chambered in 9mm. No amount of ignoring this issue will make it go away.

There was something wrong with the plates the soldiers in Somalia were issued? I thought the problem was the fact that the hard armor only covered the chest, while leaving the back and abdomen exposed?

No, the front and back were both covered. Assuming the soldiers actually wore the back plates like they were supposed to. Plenty didn't, which was swiftly corrected after the battle of Mogadishu.

Okay, I'm just going recall everything I know about the general trends of US body armor from the PASGT to the IOTV, from the various books and articles I've read, and TV shows and videos I've watched. Correct me if I'm wrong or miss something important. Considering the book where I got most of the pre-2003 information was from... 2000, I think, I probably am.

A few things. Let's go one at a time.

-The soldiers deployed to Mogadishu wore Ranger Body Armor, a III-A vest turned into level III armor with the plate. However, it only covered the chest, so more soldiers died than needed to. From here they started issuing back plates too. This body armor was usually only used by special units. It was used in Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq (for a short time).

It came with back plates, but the plates were frequently discarded out of lazyness, and ranger armour was not common in the military as a whole. While the battle of Mogadishu was the reasoning behind the decision to up-armour US troops and issue stronger plates. I believe the nickname for that armour was "second chance" because it couldn't reliably stop more than one rifle bullet. (Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't.) The ranger armour failed to function for the soldiers because they were hit multiple times and the plates couldn't handle multiple shots. New plates were later issued that could stop multiple rounds.

-Throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, the standard issue body armor was the kevlar PASGT. The vest on its own was designed to stop fragmentation, even though from the tests I've seen it can also stop pistol bullets that would put up it to par with certified II-A or II standard vests (depending on the source). It provided no protection against rifles.

It also didn't really provide much protection against shrapnel. It was complete shit, and the reason most veterens from that era firmly believe body armour to be worthless. Kevlar is useless against edged weapons and the thing was overall useless in warfare. The armour itself was NIJ-II, but with the plates originally issued it was III-A. After 1993, new plates were issued for PASGT that brought it up to NIJ-III, but they didn't last under fire any more than the ones the rangers used to have. (I think they may have inherited the old ranger plates, but I could be wrong.)

-In 1996, a small number (4,000) of rifle-proof plates compatible with the PASGT vest were produced as an interim product for the armor switch. They were issued to US troops in Yugoslavia in limited numbers. They covered the chest and back.

Those plates may have been issued, but they were neither the first nor the largest run of anti-rifle plates for the PASGT vest. I believe you're thinking of the limited run of OTV-style plates that was put out to increase protection until interceptor armour could be issued. I thought that was later than 1996, though I could be wrong.

-Around late 2003, the PASGT was replaced by the Interceptor body armor, specifically the OTV model, which on its own (i.e. just the vest) was III-A, a huge improvement over the last armor, and with the relevant ceramic plates was III. It could stop a few 7.62 rounds and about a dozen 5.56 (depending on range, of course).

For the most part, that's correct. It also features an actual anti-shrapnel chainmail layer, which the PASGT didn't. The thing is, though, that 7.62 is a large range. Do you maybe mean 7.62x51mm or 7.62x39mm? In the former case you'd be correct, in the latter it would be more and likely as many as half a dozen.

-In late 2007/early 2008, the OTV was phased out in favor of the level IV IOTV, which not only covered more of the body (most of the abdomen + the sides), but featured new and improved plates.

The IOTV is nice, but the plating doesn't cover the abdomen or sides, only the kevlar does. And yeah, it's pretty damned awesome.

I can believe that (the tests I've seen where it just blasted through the plate was with level III armor), but still, this is a lot to swallow considering it's an anti-materiel cartridge. A big one. As I said, even if the plate somehow managed to stop the bullet itself, would the person wearing it really not get their bones cracked and internal organs turned into jelly from the pure kinetic energy of the impact, even if it wasn't specifically an AP round?

 

...plus, the people in the video you posted used two plates.

1. Doing that kind of damage through impact alone would take a cannon. And not a small cannon, either. The .50 is NOT that powerful, and while the impact would likely break a rib or two and rupture a lung that's all it's going to do and it's highly unlikely such an injury would even be life-threatening. Firearms do NOT work as bludgeoning weapons, they do NOT have the momentum, and the .50 is no different. There's no man-portable firearm with enough power to turn internal organs "into jelly from the pure kinetic energy". The human body is one durable piece of machinery, one especially strong against "pure kinetic energy" and it's certainly not the plasticine figure you seem to be imagining.

2. The number of plates has no bearing, the first plate stopped it and did so in a circumstance where it is MUCH worse off than it would be inside body armour on a soldier's body. (As it's more firmly fixed and can't move away from the impact or shift to change the angle like it would in a vest.) Granted, that's a standalone plate, but NIJ-IV body armour on a soldier's body would outperform a standalone plate sitting against a hard object.

But not even one game design team has ever had a competent consultant who could let them in on something like this?

Game studios don't hire consultants at all. When they do, they don't hire ones that know what they're talking about. On the rare instance that manages to pass, they don't listen to them. It's the exact same shit you see with consultants in movies, only worse.

Thanks for the response.

 

Also: abdomen shots. ANOTHER way I can mentally make myself somewhat comfortable with Freeman killing armored American soldiers.

Except even with the abdomen, there's still kevlar and chainmail that will stop all small-arms fire dead. The armour is still IIIA down there and nothing Gordon has will penetrate that.

I meant 100 + 50% / 100 x 1.5 = 150

That may be what you meant, but it is not what you said.

While that is usually true, presumably the HECU medics would be fully equipped just because of the nature of their unit. Plus, doesn't Black Mesa depict all soldiers wearing the same armor in-game? Well, that would explain the officers more, at least...

1. Man, I'm just justifying a gameplay choice.

2. You'd be surprised how similar PASGT and Interceptor look, especially with the older OTV vests.

3. You'd also think that by the nature of their unit the HECU would bring, you know, hazmat equipment. And probably a better supply of anti-material munitions. And have dedicated ordnance technicians. Yet, none of that's there.

On the PASGT: was the vest and helmet + rifle-proof plates common? As I said, everything I've read indicates that the plates for the PASGT were produced in very limited numbers, and that usually soldiers would get just get the vest with no rifle protection before the switch to Interceptor armor. They could all be wrong, though.

Before 1993? Basically non-existant. During 1993? Very limited usage. After 1993? Any troops deployed were supposed to wear them but there weren't many before the interceptor replaced it and just because they were supposed to doesn't mean they did. It was the battle of Mogadishu that made them start issuing them, where the weak plates in the current armour failed to stop a rather massive number of US troops from dying of chest wounds from the local militia's rifles.

Okay, that sounds pretty challenging.

Damn straight.

So the OSIPR would take 15 shots to down an Overwatch soldier? 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?

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. If it would deal great damage but it is terrible against armour, it still gets a low score (see: shotgun) but if it would deal little damage but it is great against armour (see: 5.56) it still gets a high score. 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.

Wait, really!?

 

I was always under the impression that the .50 BMG, an anti-materiel rifle cartridge, was just too powerful for any man-portable armor to stop (or at least so powerful that no man could survive getting by it even if his armor was somehow able to stop it due to the kinetic energy). That's the impression I got from various testing videos and articles. You got any sources for the claim that standard armor today would both stop it and let the wearer survive a hit from that? I mean, I know it would technically be possible to survive (the human body can survive a lot of things, and some people actually have survived it), but it actually being likely thanks to armor?

The thing about the .50 is that its penetration really isn't that fantastic. It penetrates about twice as deep as a 7.62x51mm FMJ round. Know what else penetrates about twice as deep as a 7.62x51mm FMJ? A 7.62x51mm AP round. Guess what the plates in our troops' armour has no issue at all stopping over and over again? Well, in the .50's case it hits really hard so it'll break the plate and likely cause quite a bit of damage clear through the armour, but NIJ-IV body armour with inlaid ceramic plates can stop it exactly one time enough to make it a (most likely) non-lethal wound at the expense of destroying the plate.

I could only find one example that didn't use armour-piercing rounds on it, or was actually testing body armour.

RGhIfTAcOgI

Stopped it on the first plate. I've seen better tests, though. Including one with an actual IOTV vest on a wooden stand, being shot with an M107 at 50m, where the armour stopped it but the stand fell over and the plate inside was shattered.

On request, here are the health scores, attack damage and known multipliers for each enemy.

Headcrab:

Health 5

Damage 3 in Half-Life and Black Mesa, 2 in Half-Life 2

Headcrabs will (usually) die in a single hit. Only hits from other headcrabs and individual shotgun pellets fail to kill them in a single shot, although occasionally a pistol shot will hit their leg and fail to kill them. Not a threat to anybody.

Fast headcrab

Health 3

Damage 3

Fast headscrabs will survive, I think, no attack from anything in the game if it hits their body.

Poison headcrab:

Health 10

Damage 25 (to NPCs), irritating poison effect to player characters that makes them growl and shoot the damned thing a hundred extra times.

These take two bullets, one every once in a while if you hit the right place but that's finicky as hell, and are likely the most irritating enemies in the whole damned game. Just blast them with the shotgun or the SMG, there's no shortage of either.

Zombie (normal):

Health 20 in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, 40 in Black Mesa

Single slash 25

Double slash 50

In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm and 4x damage from buckshot, 1/2 damage from the crowbar

These guys hit hard and all, but they're too slow and fragile for that to be meaningful. The crowbar makes quick work of them in Half-Life, but in Black Mesa it can take a couple hits. In all games, the pistol and shotgun do them in quick. The was a damage difference in HL2, but I fixed it.

Zombie (security):

Health 30 in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, 60 in Black Mesa

Single slash 25

Double slash 50

In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm and buckshot, 1/2 damage from the crowbar.

What's left of their body armour works pretty well at keeping them running, but they're still pretty weak enemies. Pistol and shotgun are still the best weapons, just less so for the shotgun now.

Zombie (marine):

Health 40 in Half-Life

Single slash 25

Double slash 50

These guys can take more to kill, but that doesn't change their weakness compared to other enemies. They're too slow and don't last very long in a fight, just take the shotgun and double-blast them in the head. I only wish they appeared in Black Mesa.

Zombie (combine):

Health 40

Single slash 25

Double slash 50

Basically identical to the marine zombie, except with a new suicide bomb attack that will ruin your day. As in, it'll take off a good chunk of your health and possibly kill Alex. Don't let them get close.

Zombie (gonome):

Health 30

Single slash 50

Gore grenade 25

Bite 100

Faster and harder hitting than the typical zombie, still goes down fast but they're more likely to get a good hit in and if they do it'll be a strong one, especially since Adrian is less resistant to damage than Gordon. Finally, a zombie worth fighting.

Zombie (fast):

Health 20

Single slash 25

Double slash 50

These damned things can't have different stats from the regular zombies for some reason. So they get to go from "annoying" to "annoying and possibly actually dangerous". At the very least it makes Ravenholm a bit more frightening.

Zombie (poison):

health 40

Melee 25

Used to be 15, but I fixed it.

Gonarch:

Health... Doesn't actually have a health score. Somehow.

Melee 25

Splash 20

The melee of this thing is pretty weak, despite its size. Kinda how it goes when you have a contact area so large. Just watch out for its chemical attack and all the irritating as hell baby headcrabs, and take it down.

Houndeye:

Health 30, 60 in Black Mesa

Damage 60, 30 in Black Mesa

In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm bullets and 4x damage from buckshot

Houndeyes can be easily killed in a single shotgun blast from the front in Black Mesa as most pellets will count as headshots. In Half-Life, not so much, they're actually harder to kill there due to the lack of multipliers and no weak spot. (Though their attack is SO SLOW in the original Half-Life they're no threat at all, and in Black Mesa it's pretty damned fast.)

Barnacle:

Health 20 in Half-Life 2, 40 in Black Mesa

In Black Mesa, 1/2 damage from .357, 2x damage from crowbar.

Couldn't find the convar for them in Half-Life. Odd. Anyway, dies real quick to the crowbar, but if you don't want to risk it just use the handgun or shotgun and kill them quickly. And they're not actually stronger in Black Mesa, it's just some weirdness with the hitbox I had to adjust for.

Bullsquid:

Health 160

Bite 30

Whip 50

Spit 5 in Half-Life, 1x5 in Black Mesa

In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm and buckshot

Bullsquids take a surprising amount of fire to bring down, especially in Half-Life. From a distance they aren't a big threat, but in the segments with low ammunition availability they serve to soak up all your rounds and then you're stuck fighting them with a crowbar and they hit like a ton of bricks if you get close. In Black Mesa they're easier to kill as long as you have the 9mm or shotgun available but their spit attack is more impressive and harder to avoid.

Icthyosaur

Health 240

Shake 50

The tonnes and tonnes of health and its erratic underwater movement make it a bitch to kill and it's easier just to avoid it.

Antlion:

Health 10

Swipe 10

Jump 15

Air 20

A very weak glass cannon. Mostly just distracts the combine so you can flank them, honestly not very useful as allies.

Worker:

Health 10

Burst 20

Spit 20

Poison ratio 0.5

Dangerous as hell at range, and in melee they blow up in your face. You will be losing health in these fights, the question is how much.

Myrmidont:

Health 1500

Charge 20

Shove 10

Throws you all around and tanks hits like a champ. Much, much more dangerous than those low damage scores make it sound.

Vortigaunt:

Health 60 in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, 30 in Black Mesa

Claw 30 in Half-Life and Black Mesa, 25 in Half-Life 2

Rake 60 in Half-Life and Black Mesa, 50 in Half-Life 2

Zap 50 in Half-Life, 50 in Half-Life 2, 100 in Episode 2, 25 in Black Mesa

In Black Mesa, 1/2 damage from 9mm and 1/4 damage from buckshot.

Note that Vortigaunts attack faster in Half-Life 2 and their zaps are MUCH faster in Black Mesa. Also, partial damage is a thing, at least for NPCs, so doing 0.5 damage is totally possible and that 1/4 damage effect totally works even though the shotgun in that one only does 2/pellet. Just stick to the .357, crossbow and crowbar and use the MP5 if you get desperate.

Alien grunt:

Health 80, 40 in Black Mesa

Bash 50

In Black Mesa, 1/2 damage from 9mm and explosives, and 1/4 damage from buckshot, 1/2 damage from the front and 1/5 damage anywhere they have armour plates. Melee used to be 40, but I fixed it.

Alien controller:

Health 50

Small zap 10

Large zap 50

In Black Mesa... I'm not sure if they benefit from the multiplier, but if they do then 1/2 damage from 9mm and 1/4 damage from buckshot. If not, then normal damage from all things. The reason I'm not sure is I know the grunts DO benefit from the vortigaunt's damage scaling convars but I don't remember with the controllers and don't have a handy save to test it.

Gargantua:

Health 2000, invincible in Black Mesa

Slash 100

Stomp 10

Fire 10

The gargantua shouldn't be fought. You will have a very hard time killing it without an almost silly amount of explosives. The one time you have to at the end of Half-Life you should just mine the crap out of the hallway before it, lure it into all the mines and satchel charges, then if it's still alive rocket it to death.

Nihilanth:

Health 2000

Zap 50

This thing has the health of a gargantua, and when it starts out fires a barrage of balls like a controller with the firepower of the controller's large ball. Prepare to die. A lot.

HECU marine:

Health 150, 125 for Black Mesa grenadiers and Opposing Force engineers, 100 for Black Mesa and opposing force medics, 75 for Black Mesa officers

Melee 30

These guys are DANGEROUS. They take a lot of fire to bring down and rack up hits really, really fast. Fights with them can take a while and usually cost you a lot of ammunition, armour and health. Of course, when they're on your side in Opposing Force they're pretty impressive and those fights would be just about impossible without them (on hard, at least).

Black ops (Female):

Health 50

Pistol 3

Melee 30 in Half-Life, 20 in Black Mesa

The pistol does less damage because it's suppressed. Trust me, that makes sense. Their melee in Black Mesa is also weaker to make up for how fast it is.

Black ops (Male):

Health 100

Kick 50

These guys are a decent compromise between their female counterparts' speed and the marines' power. Even their grenades move 25% faster than the ones the marines use.

Security guards:

Health 75

These guys are relatively strong and are quite capable of handling the early-game Xenian wildlife. The problem is both the Xenian and human soldiers are too much for them, so they need a lot of support. Basically, you need to tank for them and let them help with the DPS.

Scientist:

Health 25

Heal 5

They go down way too quickly, faster than should be possible, to most threats due to a complete lack of protection and their own frailty. Thankfully, they tend to stay in the back and cower.

Pit drone:

Health 10

Bite 50

Whip 100

Spike 25

These things are the glassiest of cannons. They go down in one Desert Eagle shot or two Glock shots, but they will take off big chunks of health really fast if allowed.

Shock trooper:

Health 100

Kick 50

These things actually kick a lot of ass, and will happily make the ass they kick yours if given the chance. They're dangerous due to a combination of high-damage attacks, even though their health isn't stellar.

Shock roach:

Health 10

Damage 0

Lifespan 60

Yeah, I didn't think their behaviour made any sense. They can't hurt you anymore, they just can't attach if you already have one.

Voltigore:

Health 400

Melee 25

Shock 25

Their attacks are too slow to be a threat, so in the open they're just a damage sponge, but in confined spaces they can be dangerous. Hint.

Baby voltigore:

Health 200

Melee 25

I'm just going to say I don't fight these things. And you really shouldn't either. Just run right past them, they're not a threat and they're not worth the ammo. Also, I don't like killing baby animals, but maybe that's just me.

Pit worm:

Health 50 (Only stuns it.)

Swipe 100

Beam 10

Still a puzzle boss. Just be careful, this thing hits like a freight train.

Gene worm:

Health 250 (Per stage.)

Spit 25

Hit 50

The final boss is a tad underwhelming, but it was in Vanilla as well.

Citizen:

Health 100

Heal 10

The citizens in later sections of HL2 are pretty helpful, but the combine will kick their asses if you don't help them out. They're just not as durable and their AI is inferior.

Combine Metropolice:

Health 100

Stunstick 10

Pretty weak for humanoid enemies, and their weapon choice and AI don't help much, but they'll feel pretty damned potent the first time around when you realize they can take plenty of bullets to down. Though, of course, after fighting the overwatch a while these guys seem like total chumps.

Combine Overwatch:

Health 150

Kick 30

Good and solid, just like the HECU. Challenging, fun to fight and satisfying to defeat. Kick used to be 15 but I just fixed that.

Combine Elite:

Health 200

Kick 40

Same as above, but more so. Kick also used to be 20 but that has also been fixed.

Manhack:

Health 5

Melee 10

This thing dies in 1-2 hits and is a light hitter. Not a threat, it's only meant to flush you out of cover so the CPs can shoot you.

Scanner:

Health 10

Dive 20

Also dies fast, only damages you when it dies. The blinding effect is annoying in fights, though, and it's not a combat unit anyway.

Hunter:

Health 100

Charge 20

Slash 50

Flechette 10

Explosion 10

1/4 bullet damage, 1/16 buckshot damage.

Engaging hunters with the 9mm and SMG takes forever, and you almost cannot carry enough ammunition to kill it with the shotgun. Use the AR2, crossbow, crowbar, explosives or a vehicle for full damage.

Gunship:

Missile hits 3 (hard), 2 (normal), 1 (easy)

Cannon 250

Immune to most weapons.

This thing will 4-shot you and flies too high to hit with anything but rockets 99% of the time. This thing is a proper boss.

Strider:

Missile hits 5 (hard), 4 (normal), 3 (easy)

Cannon 250

Immune to most weapons. Highly resistant to everything but the rocket launcher.

This thing will 4-shot you and can take dozens of hits from energy balls, grenades and explosive barrels to down so only rockets really work. The one in the citadel is a royal pain as a result.

Helicopter:

Health 7500

Bomb hits 30 (hard), 20 (normal), 15 (easy)

Cannon 25

Bomb 25

One of the most dangerous enemies in the game, but the slug-out with it once you get the gun on your airboat is one of the most fun in the game, and so is the gravity gun slug-out in Episode 2.

APC:

Health 10000

Missile 500

Gun 25

These things are plenty dangerous and your airboat gun will take about 400 shots to kill them. That's less than it sounds.

And what about the alien hornets, and the hornet gun?

I've said everything I'm going to say about it.

Okay, that makes more sense. Still, that's durable as hell. I wonder why all the self-proclaimed super-realistic video games still have everyone fold in only a few shots. Surely, if having a soldier take ten rifle shots to the chest before going down (as is usually the case in more "unrealistic" games) and be almost completely immune to pistols, SMGs, and shotguns (which no game that I know of does) was way more realistic, at least one "simulation" style game by now would have done it?

If game designers had ANY clue what the word "realistic" meant, they would. But they don't.

So, what would your estimate be for how much shots an American soldier could take wearing armor standard in the early to mid 2000s from a 5.56 rifle, at the very short ranges Half-Life's combat typically take place at? Not just from the armor breaking, but also from the kinetic energy?

The energy is meaningless. Even rifle rounds don't do shit through body armour if they don't penetrate it. I don't know if you know, but body armour is and always has been padded, and bullets don't have much momentum. The rifles would have to penetrate to do more than bruise. And really, the answer to this question comes down to "how long before a couple rounds go through the abdomen" or else "how long until the plate breaks". There's no answer to the former, for the latter I'll go with the manufacturer-guaranteed twelve shots and add 50%. I'll go ahead and say 18.

That would be level-4 with the rest of the armor system, right?

No, that plate is a level-IV standalone. As in, without the rest of the armour. It's for when a full vest is too bulky.

Huh. Any particular reason the armor didn't cover half of the torso prior to the IOTV? Budget issues?

I don't think so. Budget may be a factor, but I think the simple fact that keeping our troops from at all bending their torso even the tiniest little bit while also increasing the weight of their armour would be a recipe for disaster and might be the reason they choose not to do that. And even the IOTV only reaches down a bit lower to cover some vital upper-abdominal organs.

I was aware of the Simo Hayha story. Not the other ones, though. As I said, I know it's possible to survive getting shot in the head, and even still function after, I just said that the odds of it happening were low.

No, you said that it would be immediately incapacitating. I said it was not. Although it CAN blind you for a bit, like any hit to the head is prone to do. These stories weren't just survival stories, they were stories of people continuing to function with gunshot wounds to the head. A man shot all to hell by a firing squad (with full-power rifles at that) playing dead, waiting for them to leave and then getting up (with his fucking arms bound together!) and walking off to find a doctor, with all those bullet wounds, means he's still pretty functional. So is losing a solid third of your brain and then staying conscious long enough to fatally wound a man at long range with your rifle (which takes a lot of precision) also means he's functional. A small child being shot all over with hollow-point pistol rounds, including two through the brain and one damaging her thalamus (the "YOU ARE FUCKING DEAD NOW" part of the brain) and still crying when the cops find her also means she's functional, as does her mother overpowering the shooter after being shot in the head and running out of the car screaming for help. These people were all shot in the head, some of these being multiple headwounds or extraodinarily large headwounds, and kept on going anyway. And even in the cases where the victim dies, it's not that strange for them to keep going anyway for a while.

Hah, I guess that explains it. Do you hate medics, too? I don't think them only wearing a partial helm would justify giving them 50% less health either...

1. 100 is not 50% less than 150.

2. Medics usually wear lighter armour as they're NOT meant as direct combat troops. Many medics in Iraq, for instance, kept wearing PASGT armour well after it was phased out for actual combat troops. I think they inherited the OTV vests when the combat troops switched to IOTV in 2007, but I could be wrong. I assumed the grunts and marines were wearing OTV, while the medics (both of which are support troops) were still wearing PASGT and the officers were lazy enough to either remove parts of their armour or keep their older PASGT armour to save on weight. (NOT that far fetched. I knew a guy whose officer would stay in the vehicle and have the enlisted men do everything so he never had to walk anywhere, and still complained about how heavy his gear was. Managers are just fucking pricks the world over, aren't they?)

Would you mind posting the health values for the enemies somewhere?

Well, there's a lot of them, but sure. I'll go post those in the other thread.

Eh... while that enhances the difficulty, having them take a hundred bullets to kill yet do pitiful damage seems like it would be more boring and repetitive than challenging.

 

Yeah, I agree that the Black Mesa Alien Grunts are beasts. Yet every enemy was buffed in that game. Especially the marines and houndeyes.

Are you STILL ignoring their extremely high melee damage? Or the fact that (outside of Black Mesa) they come grouped with hard-hitting vortigaunts like, ALL the time? They are quite challenging, even to the very heavily armoured Gordon Freeman, and scuffles with them are best handled from a distance, vortigaunts killed first, otherwise you will lose a LOT of health and armour and likely all of your allies if you have any at that point.

Also, if you thought the grunts were beastly before, you should see how they perform now. I think the wake-up call is when you've gotten pretty used to the idea that HECU=BADASS and then see two marines get killed by a pair of grunts right after they wake up. See, combining very high melee damage with good speed and near-invulnerability to bullets from the front makes them extremely dangerous. I usually find circle-strafing to hit them in the back, preferably with a weapon they don't resist (energy weapons, crossbow, .357 or the crowbar) is the best way to deal with them because otherwise you're stuck fighting an enemy head-on that can totally tank full magazines of fire and hits like a runaway truck.

1. Oh, okay.

 

2. How many rocket launcher hits does the LAV-25 take anyway? It should go down pretty quickly to an anti-tank weapon.

 

3. I think I misunderstood the HL2 damage values. How much health are the Overwatch troopers supposed to have?

2. Depends on difficulty and hit location. I only play on hard and usually use 2-3 shots. Whereas with the tank I'd show up with full ammo and have to scavenge for more rockets just to take it out because the rocket launcher (otherwise overpowered as hell) can easily take over half a dozen hits on hard and keep on going.

3. 150, same as the HECU marines. The Overwatch elites have 200, same as the Opposing Force marine allies.

I think I should have been clearer... by "gib", I don't mean literally make explode into a thousand pieces, I mean more like ripping off body parts and taking out huge chunks of the body, which as far as I know that weapon can do.

You think it's plausible that Freeman's HEV suit could let him survive it?

Why not? I assumed his armour to be much better than the IOTV, and the IOTV will stop it a grand total of once. (Although the soldier will still have at least one broken rib and a deflated lung, not necessarily a fatal injury but enough to take him off active duty for quite a while and it could be fatal under the right circumstances due to internal bleeding and breathing issues.) The .50 isn't a cannon, and it only has about the penetrative ability of an armour-piercing rifle round. It's a lot bigger and hits a lot harder, so hard armour has a much bigger problem with it, but it can still be stopped at least once by an NIJ-IV vest. I assumed Gordon's armour had somewhat better protective abilities and could take multiple hits due to its nature as electro-reactive armour.

In-game the .50 takes four chest shots to kill Gordon on hard if he has full health and armour charge, two if at full health and no armour charge. For comparison, the 25mm takes three in the former case and two in the latter. A 9mm bullet takes 200 in the former and 100 in the latter. Both guns do SO much damage they absolutely will instantly kill Gordon if they hit him on hard, compared to the 9mm only doing 20 damage on a headshot. (If you must know, the damage comes to 1040 for the .50 if it hits Gordon in the head, and 1600 for the 25mm. But then, most powerful attacks would instantly kill Gordon if they hit him in the head, and other than these two most powerful enough aren't locational.)

That's called "Waking up".

To be honest, I don't even LIKE it. It's too smooth. I mean, I bought it so I'm going to drink it, but when I don't have to slow down and it barely makes an impact, it's too smooth. This shit is dangerous because I could drink enough to get absolutely hammered completely by accident with how smooth and easy to drink this is. I do not desire any more than a light buzz. Maybe I should have bought Jack Daniels instead of Jim Beam, or maybe even scotch, and next time I'm definitely getting fireball or something else with flavour.

Laidlaw said that? Where?[/auote]

 

http://www.valvetime.net/threads/marc-laidlaw-vault.114535/page-6#post-3141727

 

And that's only supposed to be level III? It's pretty shocking that, going by this video, the average American soldier would be almost completely immune to the standard issue rifle in the US military (unless they take significant damage from kinetic energy transfer?). Anyway, didn't you say it could take "only" about a dozen earlier?

 

Ain't it amazing? But keep in mind that's an NIJ-III standalone plate and is actually tougher than the plates in our soldier's IOTV vests. IOTV vests are NIJ-IV as a whole, and it's an easier mark to hit. I know that sounds weird. But see, a trauma plate is SO much more effective when part of a heavily padded, double-layered, chainmail-reinforced kevlar protective vest, as the padding, chainmail and kevlar all help cushion the impact and reduce damage to the plate, that a fairly unimpressive plate (that as a standalone would likely only be NIJ-II) can bring the system (that without it is NIJ-IIIA) all the way up to NIJ-IV.

 

Keep in mind the "12 hits" claim was vague on the calibre the plates were meant to stop, and was at point blank instead of 100 metres. This was a 100-metre test. A rifle at 100 metres is a lot weaker than a rifle at 10 metres, much less 1 metre. In CQB that plate would have broken to fewer shots, due to a combination of greater hitting power, faster fire rate and tighter grouping.

 

Do you have any examples of a manufacturer saying "our armor is guaranteed to stop X amount of 5.56 bullets"?

 

http://firstdefense.com/html/Hard_Armor.htm

 

According to them, their model AA4 level-IV standalone plates will stop a 7.62x54 or a 12 guage slug just fine at point blank, and hold up to twelve shots from some vague attack at point blank.

 

So, a soldier could still get wounded by gunshots to the torso even if the armor holds? Where specifically is he unarmored besides the sides?

 

Yeah, in the abdomen. The IOTV trauma plate reaches down lower and (I believe) covers the liver, stomach and spleen and nothing below. The OTV doesn't reach as low and only covers the chest. So abdominal wounds only have to contend with kevlar and very thin chainmail, which would stop a pistol but is no issue for a rifle.

 

In the PS2 version, the scientists and medical machines seem to be directly injecting it into Freeman's bloodstream with needles.

 

Which also makes more sense than drinking it.

 

Oh, I'm aware of that. But the chances of surviving, to say nothing of continuing to fight, after getting shot in the head, especially with a rifle, are quite low. I remember reading a world record about a man who lived many years with a bullet lodged in his skull.

 

So you know, the record is only remarkable because the bullet stayed in. Many people have taken headwounds from rifles and kept going. Good examples being Wenseslao Moguel and Simo Hayha. Wenseslao was shot by a firing squad eight times in the chest and twice in the head, then sought medical attention under his own power. Simo Hayha was shot in the head with an enormous expanding rifle round that took off a huge chunk of his brain, then shot back and killed his attacker before passing out. Both men survived.

 

For a non-rifle example, there's tiny little Alexis Goggins. A seven-year old shot six times with a pistol at point blank, including four head wounds although only two hit her brain, survived and was still conscious and moving when the police finally removed her from the vehicle. Her mother was also shot in the head during this incident, and managed to overpower her attacker and flee the vehicle.

 

B. Does the Commanders not wearing helmets really justify them getting HALF as much health as a grunt? Also, those damage values are for Hard difficulty, right?

 

Yes, that's for hard, it'll take fewer shots on lower difficulties. And yes, not having a helmet makes a huge difference, especially since I can't just change the headshot multiplier for them like I'd rather do and have to compromise between them dying in a silly low number of chest shots or taking way too many bullets to the head. But there's more than that, of course. Although I think my disdain for military officers might have had an impact.

 

C. Obviously living tanks stomp foot soldiers, but what about other alien infantry in base Half-Life? Like I said, I don't agree with the Grunts doing so little damage. It seems to devalue them and basically miss the point of their existence. It sounds like the Vortigaunts are better fighters in this mod, since they do so how much damage and fire really quickly on Hard mode.

 

You seem to have missed how unbelievably brutal the grunts are in melee combat, since the damage wasn't listed. And the fact that they tank an almost silly number of bullets and it frequently feels like you're, to use Freeman's words, fighting a dump truck. They only have 40 hit points in Black Mesa, but since they take basically no damage anywhere they have armour, take half damage from the front already, take half damage from the 9mm and quarter damage from buckshot, I have seen one literally take over a hundred bullets to kill. They're also surprisingly fast and hit like a freight train. The grunt encounters here are brutal and you definitely do not feel like you have them under control at any point, unlike the vortigaunt fights.

 

They're not as good in Half-Life as in Black Mesa, but they're more common and aren't supposed to be as impressive there. In Half-Life, they have 80 hit points and take no damage anywhere they have armour. This, combined with their armour covering their entire chest and almost their entire head, can make them either more or less durable than marines depending on how you handle them, but they're common, hit hard in melee and make damned fine damage sponges to protect the vortigaunts and let them get off multiple high-power lightning blasts.

 

D. So 10 rifle bullets to take down a standard grunt with just torso shots? Seems about right. I think the .357 is too powerful, but that's kind of necessary just for game balance, or else it would just be worthless. In base Black Mesa, don't the autocannons that the LAV-25s tote do like 5 damage? The HL2 Pulse Rifle should also do more damage.

 

1. Keep in mind that "chest" and "abdomen" are totally different here. I was given the option to make them different and they are. You do half damage to the abdomen against all opponents. It shouldn't be like that for marines, but I can't change them separately.

 

2. I think it was more than 5, but it was indeed shit. But right now it's ungodly powerful and makes the LAV more dangerous to the player than the Abrams you fought to get to it. (Although, obviously, the Abrams takes way more hits to kill, the environment and its choice of weapon work against it.)

 

3. I chose 10 for the AR2. It's higher than vanilla, for starters, in proportion to the pistol and SMG. (The 5 and 4 values are the same as in vanilla, but coincidentally so, and the AR2 did 8 in vanilla. Making it 10 is making it better than in vanilla.) That already makes it better than vanilla by 25%, and there's no other source to work with. The AR2 also has an advantage later on in being more effective against hunters than any of your other "standard" weapons. Even in HL2 itself, once you get the AR2 it is by far your best weapon as only it and the SMG-1 can down an overwatch trooper in one magazine without requiring headshots. (Excluding the rocket launcher, of course.) And compared to the SMG-1 it does the job much faster and can do it twice in a single magazine instead of only once, and can do it to the stronger overwatch elite when the SMG cannot. I've already made the AR2 by far the best weapon in the game. I don't need to do it by any more.

 

Off-topic, but I loved how Black Mesa depicted the M2 Browning. Usually in video games, including base Half-Life, this weapon would be given similar damage to the rifle or even pistol for game balance. Not here. It may not take everything out in one hit ("realistically" it would one-shot any infantry in the game, including Gordon), but it comes pretty close, and it doesn't really matter due to how fast it is. It friggin GIBS enemies, like it does in real life. That hold the line sequence at the end of Power-Up made it feel like you were John Rambo. I haven't seen many games that give this weapon the power it deserves.

 

The .50 doesn't actually gib people in real life. At best it might take somebody's arm off. It's not a cannon, and I wish people would stop treating it like it is. And Gordon's armour being able to stop it isn't that far fetched either, because once again it's not a cannon. And human soldiers taking a bullet from it and surviving also isn't that far fetched, because it's once more not a cannon.

 

I'm pretty sure it's the same in-game model. That's my theory, though.

Do I need picture links to prove otherwise? Adrian's armour isn't the same design.

I haven't had any of this brand before! I was just trying it out, and now suddenly I'm a "drunk". I only had one friggin' shot!

kf3r2Tja0-8

It's a tribute by Maynard James Keenan to his mother. The mother he watched slowly die over the course of 27 years. The album is called 10,000 days because that's how long she spent paralysed before she finally passed. This eulogy is strong, heart-felt and moving, and displays an artistic value most music simply lacks.

I know it's 7:30. I don't fucking care. Can't I have ONE shot of whiskey without people calling me a drunk?

That's your preference then. I on the other hand like to use the HD pack because it makes more sense and looks nicer (though I actually think the default pistol and shotgun look better with 1998 graphics), as well as a custom M4 skin for Black Mesa.

I don't. I like the classic look of the original, and I don't like it when hitboxes and models don't match.

Wait, there's an official timeline? Where?

Less "Official Timeline" and more "Compilation of statements from Valve and in-game materials". But one can be found on every wiki. But all we really have is the date in the manual and Mark Laidlaw saying the manual's date was correct.

In the early 2000s, when the standard vest was still the PASGT? From what I've read, it was rare for PASGT-wearing troops to get the rifle-proof plates, as only a few thousand were made, and they only became standard with the introduction of the Interceptor body armor system in late 2003. Are the sources I read BS or what?

The sources you read are half-right. The inlaid plates in older PASGT armour were shit, but during the incidents in Somalia they started giving out better ones to the troops there and then they became standard.

Huh. That's pretty interesting. Wouldn't that make things worse if the chainmail gets shattered?

1. No, chainmail doesn't work that way and never has.

2. Even if it did work that way, there's still a layer of kevlar under it.

3. Even if the kevlar wasn't there, all chainmail armour ever worn was worn over padding and there's plenty of that here as well.

By the by, do you have any sources for the claim that standard body armor can take a ten or more 5.56 rifle shots before folding? Again, I don't disbelieve you, but that sounds pretty extreme and I'd like to know where I can learn more about it.

Any manufacturer of modern body armour will tell you how many hits it can take. I'm going off their statements, but here's a rifle test. With a total of 63 shots withstood from an M16 at 100 metres.

abd9bpvd6zY

The 5.56 doesn't do a damned thing against hard armour and never will.

It covers pretty much the entire torso, right?

Not really. Depends on whether it's OTV or IOTV how much, but it's not all.

I still don't like the HK53 theory, but that's for in-game reasons. You can subscribe to it if you want, but I don't.

Normally I would agree, but Freeman's Mind already changes so much about the game mechanics (the HEV suit isn't powered by batteries, Freeman can't drink green crap to regenerate, Freeman can do pull-ups, he doesn't have a helmet, anything smaller than .50 BMG bounces off the suit with sniper rifles leaving welts and most guns doing nothing, etc.) that I'm more concerned with just trying to have it make sense itself. So, I assume that.

Most part, no objections. But I don't think that green stuff is meant to be drank. I think it's applied to wounds directly, as a salve.

He doesn't even use the sights!

 

Cool. If I pair that with the HK53 + lucky shots + overkill theory, then things actually start making a bit of sense. Not much, granted, as everyone still dies/gets incapacitated too quickly (except in cases where they're shot in the head or hit in the chest a LOT) rather than running on adrenaline and bleeding out, but still. It's as close as I'm gonna get, and it allows me to watch the series without a tiny annoyance eating away at me.

Well, a gunshot wound to the head still isn't a one-shot instant out. In fact, its worldwide average survival rate is at 10%, with no adjustment for the size or number of wounds, quality or speed of medical attention or any other factors. (If you had a single small wound, fast and quality medical attention or other positive factors it'd likely be WAY higher. If you had multiple large wounds, no medical attention or other negative negative factors, it'd likely be WAY lower. This is just an average.) For the chest, I believe the average survival rate was 33%. (Same deal.) For the abdomen the average survival rate was, IIRC, 80% around the world and 95% in developed countries. (I can only imagine it's infection that makes the death rate outside of developed countries so high.)

Yep. Though it depends on some things. Heh, maybe Freeman didn't kill that Barney after all, and he just got back up a minute after Freeman left, clenching his stomach and calling Gordon a prick.

"OW, FUCK! Okay Barney, stay down and he won't shoot you again. Maybe he won't shoot you again. He won't shoot you again. He's gone. Okay, time to find a way out before he comes back. Fucking sociopath."

I'm aware of that advice, but in some cases, I'd rather not take it. I mean, if I did that, then I wouldn't be on half the forums I'm on. I'd still be on this one, though.

I don't follow it as well as I should. I do just try to make sure others know it's bullshit and don't make a big deal out of it.

Sounds frustrating, yet satisfying to get through.

It is. And of course it's a lot harder in the Black Mesa version, but I love it even more. (The hardest one is the Blue Shift one, though. Dear god, the trainyard fight is brutal. Take cover! Protect your arms and legs, they're not armoured!)

1. That's good.

 

2. So, aside from using explosives, what's the best way to take out marines? Aim for the head? 'Cause going by the x3 damage multiplier, it'd still take 17 shots (!) in your mod to kill a soldier like that (as you said it would take the entire 50-round mag to kill one shooting him in the torso, though that doesn't seem to match the MP5 doing 10 damage, as marines have 50 health... or did you change that too?). Also, the magnum doing 40 damage vs the M249's 20 damage doesn't seem very realistic. Or was that solely for balance? And are the marines drastically buffed compared to the aliens, to the point where their scripted fights are ridiculously one-sided?

 

3. I'll try that, then. At least for a bit; it sounds like it's too hard to always have on.

2.

A. Explosives are fine, but limited and seldom do it in one unless you're using the overpowered-like-mad rocket launcher. The crowbar works wonders if you can get in range, use the environment to get in close when you can. The .357 takes a lot to do them in but with precise headshots it does pretty good damage and even the marine grunt (or any marine outside of Black Mesa) will drop in exactly one mag if you score nothing but headshots. The energy weapons are beastly but they run out of ammo quick so I only use them when desperate, and the crossbow is only good against aliens to be honest and is kinda iffy against the marines. I usually use the MP5, crowbar when really close, .357 at range and Glock if that runs out, explosives as needed. And I burn a LOT of ammunition fighting these bastards, but I get through alive and that can be a struggle since these fights lost long enough to get shot many dozens of times.

B. Depends on which you're in, and in none are the multipliers the same as before. In Half-Life (and Blue Shift, and Opposing Force) they all have 150 health. However, in Black Mesa they range from 75-150. Commanders (friggin' morons didn't even bring their helmets) have 75, medics (only partial helmets, still morons) have 100, grenadiers have 125 and grunts have 150. The 9mm does 5 damage, so with the present multipliers that means that depending on difficulty grunts take 10-15 to the head, 20-30 to the chest, 40-60 to the abdomen, 54-80 to the legs or 80-120 to the arms. Keep in mind your accuracy is seldom 100%.

C. The fights are pretty one-sided, yes, but not always in their favour. There are a few they lose pretty hard. The gargantua fights are one-sided in the gargantua's favour, the grunt fights in Black Mesa (DAMN the grunts kick ass in Black Mesa, even in this mod) usually are losses for the marines, and even vortigaunts can (and do) take down marines if they can survive long enough to make a few direct hits. (2-3, varies heavily in Black Mesa but is usually more since the shots there are faster and weaker.)

D. That thread was horribly out of date. I just fixed the numbers to match the present version of the mod, I had to do a lot of changes to avoid issues with the Source engine and knockback. The .357 presently does 14. The 5.56 rounds of the sentry turrets and M249 do 15. The .50 bullets of the M2 browning do 260, and in Black Mesa the LAV-25's 25mm does 400. (So you know, Gordon takes 26-52 from the .50 and 40-80 from the 25mm, and both instantly kill Gordon if they hit him in the head regardless of health and difficulty.)

Hence the if. I'm just going to use the above theories and assume they are wearing Interceptor body armor. But the PASGT was standard issue up to 2003, and was the Interceptor even a thing when Half-Life was made? If we go by Opposing Force, then the marines are using a fantasy power armor that can take autocannon fire but still fall to enough pistol bullets. Or maybe that's just a few specific guys (my theory right now, as it would explain why Shepherd's so much durable than a standard marine). Either way, it doesn't seem like FM follows that.

No idea, but I can tell you that most marines in Half-Life are NOT wearing the same armour as Shepherd, even in Opposing Force. I can only assume Shepherd is part of an elite unit.

Thanks for all the responses, by the way. Sorry if I'm boring you by now.

I'm still tuned in. I am a bit tired and need to go get myself some caffeine (SWEET, GLORIOUS CAFFEINE!) but you're not boring me so don't worry about that.

That's just a game play induced plot hole. The model for both the weapon and the ammo pick-ups clearly shows it to be a 5.56 rifle (also, it doesn't share ammo with the pistol in the PS2 version).

Well if the game says it's a 9mm, I'm going to assume it's a 9mm. I have no reason to disbelieve it, especially since I don't use the HD pack in Half-Life and there is no equivalent for Black Mesa.

A game manual says it. What else does? Other manuals? Because they quite clearly contradict the game in certain places.

Yes, a manual says it. So does the timeline. But even assuming it was just a manual, SO WHAT? It's the only source on the matter, nothing contradicts it and it's a reasonable time for it to be occurring.

I thought that hard armor capable of withstanding rifle shots was only standardized around the beginning of the Iraq War?

There's been inlaid plates for quite a while. They just added the chainmail and better plates in the Iraq war.

Wait, chainmail?

Yes, there's chainmail in body armour now. It's between the layers of kevlar, just under the trauma plates. It's meant to stop shrapnel and other minor edged weapons that would flat-out ignore any thickness of kevlar. It can't stop a serious edged weapon, if somebody had a big knife they could get through, but it works on shrapnel. And that's why it's there. There were serious concerns with IEDs in the Iraq war, the soldiers wanted something in their armour that could resist shrapnel and they got it. They also upgraded the inlaid plates about the same time.

So the standard rifle used by the United States military, and the caliber used by both it and many other weapons, is completely useless against modern hard body armor, to the extent that they'd have to shoot someone like ten times to really hurt them? That sounds weird, yet interesting. Do you have any sources on this for further reading? I always thought that modern ceramic body armor was specifically designed to shatter after a few shots.

A few shots from a REAL rifle, sure. A 7.62x51mm would only be stopped 2-3 times. The 5.56 is just a really, really, REALLY crappy round for defeating hard armour.

And, technically, if you hit exactly the same place, you could get through on the second 7.62x51mm round or maybe the third or fourth 5.56x45mm round. But the odds of you hitting the exact same place are so slim as to barely be worth talking about. And the plating only covers the chest, keep in mind.

I'm not, I'm just concerned with the whole thing making a little bit of sense. The HK53 + lucky shots with pistol and shotgun theory does that, as even though the soldiers still go down way too quickly (like pretty much every video game, since most don't have a wound system and just work on hit points), it's still a huge step-up from shooting them with a weapon they should be nigh-immune to.

I still don't like the HK53 theory, but that's for in-game reasons. You can subscribe to it if you want, but I don't.

We can also assume that shots that are technically missing in-game are actually supposed to be hitting the target in FM, just because we can't explicitly see them miss (that seemed to be the intention with the shotgun in episode 14, at the very least), though I admit that's a big stretch.

Then the guy who never handled a gun before is a ballistic wunderkind? That's silly as hell, but it still makes more sense than what we're seeing, I'll go with it.

We see him hit enemies in the head a lot (I can't see tracers, in the game or the series, but I do see blood "puffs" coming out of the head area), but we also occasionally see him take down soldiers with shotgun blasts to the torso, when even the Barneys should be able to survive that.

The guards should be able to take quite a bit of that, actually. Even at point blank, it'd only knock the wind out of them and maybe break a rib.

He also keeps filling up the soldiers with bullets even after the game technically registers them as "dead", so we can also assume that him shooting them that many times plays a part in killing them, though that only explains so much given that he doesn't do that all the time, and sometimes even when he does it wouldn't be enough bullets. So it's a mixed bag. I dunno, you and others can go ahead and not care, but I just like trying to fix things in my mind, even if I have to reach sometimes.

It's bullshit. We all know it's bullshit. You're wasting your time justifying it, because we all know it makes the show go a lot faster and that's important. And if you want to keep pondering it, here's some fantastic advice from an ancient TV show on the matter.

4Ugebzq3juE

On your mod: it mostly looks good, though I haven't tried it yet. I'm actually a bit scared to due to what looks like a huge difficulty spike.

You have NO idea. Oh, and you need to play on hard to get the best picture. Although I should let you know that Freeman's armour lets him tank hits like a champ and the early sections before the marines show up you're going to feel like superman. ("Oh, a headcrab. It did a single point of damage. My turn." *SPLAT*) Once the marines do show up, even though they're not nearly as tough as you the encounters with them will likely drain a huge chunk of your resources, armour charge and health.

Also, just realised I made a slight typo regarding Freeman's head and then repeated it over and over. Freeman's head was only taking half the damage it was supposed to be. I fixed it.

The only thing I disagree on is the Grunts doing so little damage, as they were the elite soldiers of the Xenian army, and it makes no sense for their weapons to deal "pitiful damage". There's a lot of ways that "thornets" could be damaging weapons, as has been pointed out. It's a video game. Also, if the aim is to make it more realistic (I'd play it with the HD pack, so at least the MP5 would be less of a problem), then why do the shotgun and pistol even work on the human soldiers at all?

1. There's not much I can do about the shotgun and 9mm hurting them, it's just a .cfg mod. They *are* extremely ineffective, for what that's worth.

2. The HD pack screws with the models without changing the hitboxes, so you can be shooting at what appears to be the chest and actually hitting the gut quite a bit, especially with vortigaunts. I also assumed the MP5 was an MP5 and a 9mm when I set its damage, so it'll take a full magazine to the chest to bring down a marine, but you'll mostly be using it, the crowbar and grenades to combat marines. (And the marines are tough enough that using satchel charges and trip mines on them doesn't feel like overkill and doesn't even always work the first time. I place mines in pairs to deal with them.)

3. Again, I highly recommend the one for Black Mesa instead of Half-Life. I could do so much more with Black Mesa, and the soldiers in particular respond more realistically to gunfire. The only thing I was missing was the ability to assign multipliers to weapon damage for the marines, and the ability to set shot placement multipliers for individual enemies. And if you must do Half-Life, use GoldSrc instead of Source for the same reason.

Actually, one of the reasons I made this topic was because I was bothered by Ross's comments in an old podcast five years ago- he said that he found it really unrealistic and immersion-breaking when he had to shoot the soldiers ten times to bring them down. He also said that even if someone is wearing body armor, he finds it really implausible if one shotgun blast doesn't take them down, even if they are wearing body armor. I actually heard him say something very recently about it; something like "While body armor can make 9mm rounds nonlethal, I don't know of many people who are going to be STANDING after being shot 3 times, let alone fully combat effective." I don't pretend to be a military expert, but even I know that the unrealistic part was that pistol bullets were bringing them down at all.

If he doesn't know what he's talking about, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And if he hasn't gotten the message after all this time, he's never going to and there's no point giving him shit about it. I'm just going to recite the MST3K mantra and keep enjoying the show.

I mean, a few MP5 shots would probably be enough to take them down (if not that quickly) if they were just wearing PASGT vests, but otherwise...

Funny, I assumed they were wearing interceptor body armour.

That, and I wanted to hear what other people thought about Freeman's durability in this series, and what the limits of his HEV suit were.

I personally put it as "Makes the IOTV look like the PASGT."

I'm not arguing that the game or series are realistic, just that some things might not be quite as implausible as they look.

I fail to see how that point was expressed in that statement.

1. In HL. In FM, we don't know. This wouldn't be the first change. As for HL itself, the HD pack changes it to a rifle anyway (which still takes ten shots to down a soldier on normal) and the ammo pick ups clearly are not for an MP5, so whatever.

 

2. It would still be able to defeat it after some shots. Also, you haven't answered my question. Would every single soldier be wearing something that tough in the late 90s/early 2000s? Also, unrelated, but is 5.56 really that weak? Because standard US military body armor is designed to shatter after a couple rifle hits IIRC. Not that I don't believe you, I'm just curious.

 

3. True. People don't go down quickly in real life unless you hit the head or something. But that was necessary for the game and unchangeable in the series.

 

4. Lucky shots. As I said, I don't see these tracers you're talking about, at least not with any regularity or precision. On the other hand, I do see blood "spray" coming from the soldiers' heads a lot. As for the game... yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Even high quality soft body armor would render them extremely resistant. But eh, this is the same game where the revolver does more damage than the .50 machine gun.

1. A rifle still chambered in 9mm, need I remind you.

2. Those in active combat, especially close combat, roles? YES. And the game takes place in the 2000s anyway, it says it quite clearly. May 200X, according to the manual and all other official sources. And yes, in the 2000s, soldiers outfitted for heavy close combat would be wearing armour made out of kevlar, with chainmail inlays to resist shrapnel, padded to reduce the impact from bullets and with boron-carbide inlay plates covering their chest and upper back. They would be quite nearly immune to small arms fire, and rifle fire could not enter their chest.

And yes, the 5.56 IS that weak. The round has too little mass and can't sufficiently damage a boron carbide plate unless it's fixed in place. The plates in armour are not fixed in place. You need to pierce kevlar just to get to them, which disperses the impact slightly and slows the bullet a bit, then the chainmail beneath helps spread the impact out over the padding that softens the impact by allowing the plate to move back from the shot and spread out the force over time and partially put it into the padding and target while diffusing it too much to be harmful, so the plate takes much less damage from the bullet and the wearer takes almost none. It would take dozens to penetrate modern trauma plates, and even 1990s plates could take 6-8 with no trouble.

3. Head or heart, and you can do a lot better than the instant-death bullet nonsense of Freeman's Mind if you're concerned with realism. (I get that Ross isn't, so I'm not going to give him any shit about it.) Even with the crappy hitpoint system used in Half-Life, you can do better than they did. (And I think my mod is much closer, if you want to see what I think is better.)

4. And since my case is that the game and series are extremely unrealistic, talking about how unrealistic the game is acts as an argument against my position HOW?

Or maybe the HECU just have really shitty armor.

 

Do regular US Marines have shitty armor? No? Then where did you get that? I personally believe in the HK53 theory. I mean, there isn't any other logical explanation for why a US Marine wearing modern body armor would die after getting shot only a few times.

Except:

1. The HK53 theory is clearly bullshit since the pistol and MP5 share ammo.

2. Even if it wasn't bullshit, the HK53 is a 5.56 and still couldn't defeat modern armour in a few shots because there is no way it could get through the trauma plates and everywhere there's not a trauma plate you can't stop somebody with it without shooting them quite a bit.

3. The number of shots the marines take still wouldn't be incapacitating with an HK53 even if they weren't wearing armour.

4. This theory doesn't explain how Freeman's pistol and shotgun can hurt the marines even though they would both be completely useless.

Armor that could let the user take a dozen rifle bullets before folding was standard in the US military in the late 90s? I was under the impression that such armor being standardized happened around 2004.

The game is set in the 2000s.

I know that. But the aliens aren't of this world, and we don't know what they have. The time it takes for soldiers to die is abridged for gameplay convenience. Same thing with bullets.

Problem is, they'd still need to have something physically possible. And something that could eat through materials that varied is already impossible, then doing it fast enough for it to mean anything is even more impossible.

They DO die after impacting their target...

But they need to survive the impact to make it through the armour. I'm not just talking about their life, I'm talking about their body, and the armour is tougher than they many, many times over. There's no speed at which they'll penetrate because they could never survive an impact even close to that hard.

That was just me pointing out that what happens in the game world isn't necessarily the same thing that happens in gameplay.

And it's still not an argument.

In gameplay.

If gameplay is all you have as a source, and it is, then it's what you go with. They home in on the chest in gameplay and there's nothing contradicting it, therefore they home in on the chest. By your logic, maybe the thornets are bright green. They aren't in-game, but if you can ignore gameplay when there's nothing contradicting it then they can be bright green just as easily as they could home in on parts other than the chest.

Antlion extract and magic?

They stated directly they can heal wounds without extract, hers were just too severe. Maybe they'd be using the electricity they drain from targets to power that healing magic crap. Or maybe Decay is just a non-canon DLC and nothing in it matters.

I know that. But I don't see why this particular unrealistic aspect is excused while thornets appearing to hit the torso most of the time in-game absolutely has to be the case.

Because there's NOTHING to contradict the thornets homing in on the chest, and there's PLENTY to contradict gibbing. That's the important part.

I was.

If the doors were locked they could not possibly open them no matter how strong they were as their arms would not hold up to the force. They're clearly not durable enough to withstand breaking the locks because you can hurt them with bullets. Breaking the locks would also be extremely loud. They opened them, therefore they were not locked.

I was counting the expansions, where we get other scenes of this happening, like Vorts destroying a concrete wall in Opposing Force, or Grunts smashing more crap like that in Decay.

Assuming those are even canon, there's not much doubt about Opposing Force or Blue Shift but Decay is unlikely to be canon and we know Uplink is non-canon, you can't rely too much on visual effects in-game because all the ones shown are clearly physically impossible. Like objects being smashed into pieces bigger than the original object, that's a common one. Or just being smashed like that instead of crushed to begin with. Like with gibbing, it's unlikely to be representing something as spectacular as the visual effect given.

I was thinking that the Vorts with their super strength and claws could actually decapitate people, while the Grunts could "only" kill or cripple people in a single hit. They're ridiculously, almost cartoonishly strong. Also note that, if anything in Black Mesa is built to last, it's the walls/doors.

Vortigaunts have tiny, tiny claws that account for little here regardless of strength. No amount of force will make those decapitate.

There might be some magic involved here, at least with the Vorts, due to the weird powers they often show. Though the more likely explanation is that no one was thinking of this and just thought it would be cool to have the Vortigaunt smash through a steel door to introduce himself. The Grunts are about seven feet tall and really broad. That wouldn't let them punch through concrete, but combined with their physiology it would still make them pretty strong.

They have magic-looking powers, therefore can do anything, is a non-starter argument. It's more likely they just had it happen without thinking because the first Half-Life had, like, NO thought put into it at any point. And even with their strength, the grunt's arms are just too broad. It'd be like getting hit by a speeding moped. Sure, it'd do a lot of damage, but it's not fully incapacitating much less an instant kill and you could defend against it pretty well by just putting your arms out and pushing down, then you'd just get thrown and most of the damage would be from the fall and not the impact.

I know that such armor exists, I was just under the impression that not every soldier would be wearing that much. Anyway, how many bullets would you say it would take for a 5.56 rifle to "get through" standard military body armor whenever HL is set, around late 90s/early 2000s?

More than anything a civilian could ever buy. As in, more than the twelve I just mentioned. Civilians are strongly restricted from purchasing quality body armour just like they are weapons. Even if we assume the same strength, although the military would call those plates "light", that's still a dozen 5.56mm bullets. And yes, those are "light" plates that can stop a dozen bullets. That is totally a thing.

I never recall that being enough for me to see exactly where the bullet hit, especially at long (for the game) range.

Then my eyes are just sharper than yours.

They could also use acid.

Even worse explanation. See, in reality, there is no magical super-powered movie acid that dissolves all of everything in seconds. In reality, acid takes a damned long while and materials that are chemically different react differently. Acids that can dissolve metal are frequently more or less useless against flesh, for instance. No acid in this world can eat through both kevlar and metal, much less kevlar, metal and flesh. Even if they could, chemical reactions are just NOT that fast.

Keep in mind that their speed is likely just a gameplay convenience, like HL2's powerful but unrealistically slow crossbow.

Keep in mind they're living creatures and there's a limit to how fast a living thing can move. Even if they're being launched the acceleration would kill them if they were moving fast enough to penetrate armour, even if it didn't the impact certainly would.

Also note how the soldiers in Half-Life fold to about ten 9mm or 5.56 rounds, yet can also take several shots from an M2 Browning or even autocannon before going down.

And this doesn't apply as an argument. The game's health system is unrealistic, no shit.

Most of the time, yeah, but it's plausible that in-universe they could be hitting other spots.

Could hit, yes. But that doesn't change where they home in on, and where they home in on is the place they are by far the most likely to hit.

They have actually demonstrated supernatural powers, so it's not just their religion. I also don't know that the explanation you proposed would heal them from bullet wounds, like their attacks are shown to do in Decay, but to each their own.

Likely in the same way they healed Alex's puncture and bludgeoning wounds in episode 2, just without the fancy visual effects.

So why is them gibbing enemies just excused as a gameplay mechanic while thronets mostly hitting the torso isn't?

 

Freeman himself can only gib with the experimental weapons and explosives.

Because gibbing makes NO sense from a physics perspective and just about all the weapons that do it in-game are completely incapable of such in real life. A hand grenade is NOT that powerful, or anywhere even remotely close to approaching sort-of not really resembling a level similar to that powerful, a 40mm grenade is even less powerful. Neither of them is capable of even taking off a limb in real life. If a grenade went off in your hand you would lose your bare hand, and likely most of your upper arm, but no other part of your body would be severed. Yet in-game it blasts an entire fully-armoured human body into little giblets. That is physically impossible. There is no chemical explosive powerful enough to make it possible. Gibbing is done in Half-Life because they couldn't do complex wound graphics like severed or mangled limbs and somebody being totally intact after being, say, crushed by a giant chunk of concrete or being hit with artillery would be ridiculous. It's purely a visual effect, moreover the result of a technical limitation, and should be completely ignored at all times.

That's a rather weak excuse considering they are consistently shown to be that strong (e.g. a Grunt opens a set of heavy blasts doors with his bare hands).

Are you assuming they're locked? Because if they're not locked that's just "super-human", not "hulk-like". You could roll open doors that heavy manually with a couple guys.

I highly doubt the human neck is more durable than the steel and concrete barriers that the aliens repeatedly and effortlessly smash through.

You're using the word "repeatedly" wrong. A vortigaunt does it once, a grunt does it twice. And for the vort, it's not even close to effortless.

And a human neck doesn't need to be as strong as steel or concrete. (And for the record, sinew is as strong as iron and the neck is mostly made of sinew.) It just needs to not be locked in place. See, the human body owes a big part of its durability to its low weight, when it gets hit it just moves away from the hit and takes a LOT less damage as a result. This is why being punched in the face is painful, but being punched in the face while your head is against the ground is LETHAL. I don't doubt they could do a lot of damage, even with the grunt's ridiculously broad arms distributing the force over a huge area, but decapitation is essentially impossible with a blunt weapon strike because of the way the human body is built.

And the funny thing is that Newton's first and third laws basically mean super strength is a WORTHLESS power. Seriously, if they had the strength to break concrete walls or smash down steel doors, the first law says that once they accelerated like that (which is ALL strength does) they would stay in motion and that means they'd be throwing themselves. And that's assuming they could use it in the first place, and there's NO way they could ever use it since there's no surface that would ever provide enough traction for them to exert that much force without slipping and falling. Third law says the opposite force has to go somewhere, once you exceed your own inertia you need to rely on traction and there just isn't enough. Sorry, super strength can never be a useful power, physics won't allow it.