STK info and other stuff.

[individual]

All tests were done on the Xbox 360 at point-blank range against spartans. I don't think there are damage differences at different ranges, although I didn't test it except with the magnum pistol.

HUMANS

Assault Rifle: 12 shots to drop shield, 7 shots to kill
DMR: 4 shots (body or head) to drop shield, 1 headshot or 3 body shots to kill
Magnum: 4 shots (body or head) to drop shield. 1 headshot or 3 body shots to kill.
Mounted MG: 7 shots to drop shield. 5 shots to kill.

COVENANT

Plasma Repeater: 11 shots to drop shields, 7 shots to kill.
Needle Rifle: 6 shots to drop shield, 3 body shots is a supercombine or 1 headshot to kill.
Plasma Pistol: 3 shots to drop shields, 7 shots to kill.
Plasma Rifle: 5 shots to drop shields, 11 shots to kill.
Concussion Rifle: 2 direct hits to drop shield (and do some damage), 1 more shot to kill. Also does splash damage. Pretty much just like the brute shot. Direct hits are brutal, but the splash damage isn't that great.
Needler: 6 shots to drop shields, 6 shots to supercombine.
Spiker: 5 shots to drop shields, 13 to kill.
Plasma Turret: 7 shots to drop shield, 3 shots to kill <-------OMFG

MISCELLANEOUS

I'd guess the rocket launcher's splash damage is lethal up to 5 feet and extends up to 8 feet.

The Grenade Launcher seems to do the same or similar damage as regular frag grenades. It looks like the GL's manual detonation has a slightly smaller radius of effect, but more damage against shields.

Rocket Launcher and Spartan Laser feel the same as Halo 3.

The energy sword is usually a 1HK, however if the opponent does a melee attack, it will prevent the sword from being a 1-hit kill and is instead a 2HK.

Fuel rod gun is a 1HK direct impact and does a bit of splash damage. The shot also (sometimes) bounces off of walls.

The plasma launcher's charging can be reload cancelled by double-tapping Y.

There's an algorithm in the game that prevents modded controllers from having better accuracy from doing auto-bursts. This means that if you try to burst any weapon, it can lower your rate-of-fire, negating any possible accuracy benefit.

[skitrel]

Nice work! I can confirm that there's no damage difference on plasma weapons at different ranges. The only weapon that range effects is the shotgun. 1HK point blank. 2/3 at very close range and completely ineffective at any other range.

I've barely touched the plasma pistol so far, only 3 shots to drop shields? I wasn't aware it had been buffed so much.

All we need is fire rates now to make accurate power comparisons on weapons that don't have bloom. This almost makes the plasma pistol a go to weapon, the only down fall being that it isn't accurate, plasma weapons have random spread, single shots don't all hit the same spot.

Could you test the mounted guns after they've been detached? It feels like they might be slightly weaker but this could be due to an accuracy reduction.

[mw0swedeking]

noob question here... how do you manually detonate the grenade launcher?

[skitrel]

Sept 20, 2010 22:34:56 GMT -5 mw0swedeking said:

noob question here... how do you manually detonate the grenade launcher?

When you fire it do not release the trigger; the grenade will detonate when you release it.

[w4gasm]

Sept 20, 2010 21:49:18 GMT -5 individual said:

There's an algorithm in the game that prevents modded controllers from having better accuracy from doing auto-bursts. This means that if you try to burst any weapon, it can lower your rate-of-fire, negating any possible accuracy benefit.

!! !! shot tapping the Assault rifle in Halo was my thing... and bursting in Halo3 was always fun.... Im a little disappointed but i suppose any measure that sticks it to those cheaters is a good thing

[individual]

Sept 22, 2010 21:53:15 GMT -5 w4gasm said:

Sept 20, 2010 21:49:18 GMT -5 individual said:

There's an algorithm in the game that prevents modded controllers from having better accuracy from doing auto-bursts. This means that if you try to burst any weapon, it can lower your rate-of-fire, negating any possible accuracy benefit.

!! !! shot tapping the Assault rifle in Halo was my thing... and bursting in Halo3 was always fun.... Im a little disappointed but i suppose any measure that sticks it to those cheaters is a good thing

You can still burst in moderation, just not to the extreme.

[mannon]

Hasn't the Halo series had this algorithm for a while?

[nimrod6134]

Sept 20, 2010 21:49:18 GMT -5 individual said:

Fuel rod gun is a 1HK direct impact and does a bit of splash damage. The shot also (sometimes) bounces off of walls.

I was playing around with the Fuel Rod Gun and it seems the bouncing simply occurs when it comes in contact with something before it hits a maximum distance. I can't really estimate the distance in units because I'm not too sure how long a unit for Halo is. It seems like its maximum bounce range ends somewhere between the distance of two warthog jeeps and a human tank.

I didn't hit any surfaces that it wouldn't bounce off of but it would be worth experimenting with water or objects that aren't stable ie covenant weapon crates or even vehicles at close range. Would it detonate or bounce?

[mannon]

I wonder if angle has any effect...

[n1gh7]

Angle has no effect, it will bounce at an angle directly opposite of what it hits. It's like the GL in COD.

[mannon]

It probably primes based on a timer rather than strictly being distance based then, of course that translates into essentially the same thing... for the same kind of shot. But then it might bounce at greater ranges when firing at low angles where it can get more distance, and if fired at a really high angle you might get it to actually fall well within the range it would normally bounce and yet explode. (If you can aim high enough vertically, in CoD you can't.) But then, I don't have the game to play around with it... At least it doesn't go dead after a bounce like the GL. That would be fun as hell in CoD if you could bounce GL rounds... if more than a little OP. ;p

[wjang]

Do headshots make a difference for automatic weapons? (AR, Machine Gun Etc...)

EDIT:
To answer my own question, only the sniper, pistol, dmr, and needle rifle do headshots.

[mannon]

Do any weapons have damage that bleeds through shields before the shields have been fully dropped?

[Dissentia]

Only the sniper Mannon.

[mannon]

With a NR how long do you have to achieve a supercombine after you've sunk one needle into an unshielded opponent? I'm guessing the needles will explode before shields regenerate, but if not can you drop their shields again (like with a melee attack) and pop the third needle in for a supercombine if you're quick?

Sorry, just curious. ;p

[skitrel]

Sept 29, 2010 15:13:01 GMT -5 mannon said:

With a NR how long do you have to achieve a supercombine after you've sunk one needle into an unshielded opponent? I'm guessing the needles will explode before shields regenerate, but if not can you drop their shields again (like with a melee attack) and pop the third needle in for a supercombine if you're quick?

Sorry, just curious. ;p

Nope, a shield regen removes all needles previously on a person. Each needle from a rifle has to hit within 2-3 seconds of the previous one, while the shields are still down obviously. I don't know what the timing is with the normal needler. I presume it's about the same.

3 needles to supercombine with NR
7 to supercombine with needler. (I think)

Obviously that's against unshielded opponents.

[individual]

It's annoying how one trigger pull often results in two shots fired and there's nothing you can do about this.

I need to double check my numbers with damage resistance set to high. "Damage resistance" seems to affect both shields and health, as it takes exactly twice as many shots to drop shields with the AR when damage resistance is set to 200%.

I think it would be more useful to calculate the damage per shot (to shields and unshielded enemies) instead of just STK, btw... Because elites have slightly more health and besides, people would probably like to know how many hits it takes to take down different firefight enemies also

[individual]

Each Spartan seems to have 70 shields and 45 health, just like Halo 3, but elites have more -- either more shields or health, haven't tested to find out which one yet. Damage seems to bleed through on the shield-dropping shot with some weapons, but not others. On the last shot that takes out the shield, the AR, mounted machine gun, plasma rifle, plasma repeater, plasma pistol, brute shot, needler, and sniper rifle will do some damage to health, whereas melee attacks, the BR, NR, and magnum don't damage health until shields are dropped (haven't tested, though, whether getting really close, say within 1 point of damage makes a difference). Exactly how much bleed through there is and what it's based on, I don't know yet. I would guess that it's a fixed amount of damage, with there being light, medium, and heavy penetrating weapons. Or it might be that with some guns, the final "shield-dropping shot" does both shield and health damage.

AR: 6.3 dmg

DMR\Magnum: 18 dmg (same as the BR's entire burst). Headshot adds extra damage that results in a OHK.

Needle rifle: 12 damage (same as needler). Headshot adds extra damage that results in a OHK. Three needles (on an unshielded enemy only) result in a supercombine that does more damage, not sure how much but it's fatal on regular settings. Has a lower zoom than the DMR.

Needler: 12 damage (same as needle rifle), but unlike the needle rifle it requires 6 needles for a supercombine and can't do headshots.

Focus Rifle: Does damage over time? Different from the sentinel beam in that it has more power, but its damage output is linear (never increases). Has a lower zoom than the human sniper rifle.

Fuel Rod Gun: OHK direct hit, but also does splash damage. Whether the shot bounces depends on distance and angle. It only bounces in the first few seconds after it's fired and it won't bounce if its trajectory would be more than a 90-degree angle (ex: facing a wall directly, to get it to do a 180-degree bounce at point-blank range doesn't work, same thing for anything between that and 90 degrees) It can bounce more than once, although it's pretty hard to set up more than one bounce.

Mounted machine gun: 10 dmg (more than what it was in Halo 3, although I don't know if the ROF is the same).

Some clarification about STK:

AR: 12 shots to drop shields, 7 shots to kill (including bleed through) or 8 shots to kill a healthy unshielded enemy

Plasma Repeater: 11 shots to drop shields, 7 shots to kill (including bleed through) 8 shots to kill a healthy unshielded enemy.

Plasma rifle: 5 shots to drop shields, 11 shots to kill (including bleed through), 12 shots to kill a healthy unshielded enemy.

There are probably several cases in my original post where this needs to be fixed, to account for bleed through on the shield-dropping shot. My "shot to kill" after shields are down was often thrown off by the fact that the shield-dropping shot sometimes damaged health too.

[individual]

Also, in case it isn't clear (I actually just noticed this myself)... With the plasma repeater vs. AR, they both seem to have the same ROF and initial accuracy, but as the plasma repeater warms up, it becomes less accurate than the max recoil of the AR, and there's the obvious drop in ROF when it overheats. Unlike the ROF drop, though, the loss in accuracy happens soon enough that it gives the AR an advantage at further range.

In other words, at close range Plasma repeater > AR due to quicker shield dropping, but further away AR > Plasma repeater due to greater accuracy and therefore better TTK

And the plasma rifle? It drops shields even quicker than the plasma repeater and is more accurate, but it has a lower ROF, overheats faster, and kills unshielded enemies much slower than either the plasma repeater or AR...

Or in other words, at close range:
plasma rifle + beatdown > plasma repeater (due to quicker shield dropping)
plasma rifle without beatdown < plasma repeater (due to lower overall damage output)

And at longer range:
plasma rifle > plasma repeater (due to accuracy)

[Flubadoo]

Dammit why did the make the plasma repeater not effective vs. shields anymore?

[mannon]

It seems to me that we may have this a tad wrong on the whole bleed through issue.

The health part of the display is after all 8 blocks on either side of the center block and giving us effectively 9 blocks. I haven't seen any HD quality video to see whether the blocks are ever divided or if they are only displayed as full or gone, but either way I'm sort of doubting that the health display on the hud actually has 46 (0 to 45) levels of of resolution. Which means that some numbers are going to get generalized.

What I was thinking is if this many weapons can bleed through shields on the shield breaking shot, then it seems odd that there would be other weapons that are incapable of it. What would not seem odd to me, however, is that there would be weapons who's damage value vs shields is a very good fraction of the shield's total so that even if they do bleed through shields on the last shot we simply would not notice.

Assuming the above numbers are correct the 18 damage weapons pop shields in 4 hits and the 12 damage weapons do it in 6 and are both reported to not bleed through shields. But it is interesting to note that both of these total up to 72 damage, and would thus only have 2 points of bleed through which would not be enough to alter the hits to kill after shields go down and may not be visibly displayed by the HUD.

It may be that all weapons (not including melee bashing) are capable of bleed through on the shield dropping shot.

I'm also wondering how weapons that are more effective or less effective vs shields are handled and how that may affect testing.

Are the damage values represented here based solely off of the hits to kill numbers? If so it might be better to express them as the whole possible range of values. For example from the hits to kill info here, (assuming the shields and health info is accurate as well) it can be determined that the DMR's damage value is at least 17.5, but less than 19.166... which does indeed make 18 a pretty good candidate. The AR on the other hand would be at least 6.052631579, but less than 6.363636364 which may suggest 6.3, but no more strongly than it also suggests 6.1, or 6.2. (I arrived at these figures by comparing the hits to kill vs 70, 45, and 115 and using the biggest minimum and the smallest maximum values.)

I also have to wonder if we actually have the shields and health figured quite right. This information here seems to suggest that the human weapons do base level damage vs shields and plasma weapons get a 4X bonus vs shields.

Couldn't it also be true instead that you have 35 shields and 45 health and human weapons are 0.5X effective vs shields while plasma weapons are 2X effective? Or do we have a good source on that? I'm sure a great deal of info is already available on the guts of the past Halo games.

[mannon]

PS. I'm not saying the info is inaccurate, I'm just wondering specifically how do we know what we know or are we making some assumptions based on things we think we know?

[mannon]

Looks like the 70/45 thing came from Bungie's 2/08/08 Weekly Update in reference to Halo 3.

On the other hand Bungie's Weekly Update: 09/24/10 says there is not damage bleed over in Halo:Reach.

(It also explains a little detail about the melee "clang" when two opponents try to melee each other. Apparently the damage done by the sword user to the regular melee player is high and could still kill if the melee player has low health, while the damage done to the sword user is low.)

Damage dealt from a Clang is dependent upon the type of weapon you are clanging with:

• In the case of normal weapon vs. normal weapon (i.e. AR vs. DMR) clang, both parties will receive normal melee damage. So the same rules from above apply. If the players had shields before the clang, the shields will pop. If they don’t have shields, the players will die.
  
• In the case of normal weapon vs. melee weapon (i.e. AR vs. Sword) clang, the AR guy will receive MUCH more damage that the Sword guy. If the AR guy hasn’t had any other damage done to him (or very, very little) he will survive the clang, otherwise there is a good chance the clang will kill him. The likely hood of killing the Sword guy with a clang from a normal weapon is pretty slim unless you’ve pumped enough rounds into him to pop his shields and cause some additional body damage.
  
• Killing an enemy after saving yourself with a clang should always be followed by the war cry “Clang-a-lang-a-ding-dong!”
  

[scubasteve]

Sorry for being a total noob here, but what's the difference between the plasma rifle and plasma repeater? They both appear to be the same thing to me. (i'm a noob don't flame me)

[mannon]

Repeater
www.halopedian.com/Type-51_Directed_Energy_Rifle/Improved

Rifle
www.halopedian.com/Type-25_Directed_Energy_Rifle