An analysis of Halo's vehicle health system

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

So, it is pretty common knowledge that the presence of the Plasma Pistol, and to a lesser extent, the Plasma Grenades, in loadouts have a negative impact on Halo’s vehicular gameplay, with the PP freezing the vehicle in place allowing for easy planting of the PGs and resulting in an easy kill on a vehicle.

However, I believe that the current vehicle health system also has a hand in ruining vehicle viability.

When I first played Halo Reach, and subsequently played Halo 4, there has always been something off about the implementation of these games’ vehicle health. So, I went back to where vehicle health felt perfect(to me) in Halo 2, and then looked at the vehicle health in the Halo games that followed.

How I tested it: I grabbed PGs and proceeded to stick a Warthog in each of these games: Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Reach, and Halo 4. I counted the number of sticks required to destroy an unoperated and then operated Warthog, and then paused in between sticks to see if the Warthogs health would regenerate both operated and unoperated, and then tested how the drivers health affected the warthogs durability by testing shieldless drivers and drivers with the classic 3x Overshields. I also tested the effectiveness of small arms on vehicles.

What I found:

Halo 2: It requires 2 sticks to a Warthog both operated and unoperated to destroy it. If operated and stuck once, but the driver reshields before the second stick, it will once again take 2 sticks to destroy the Warthog. No matter how many times you stick an operated Warthog, as long as the driver reshields before the next stick, the Warthog will continue to require that 100% damage be dealt to it, despite visible damage that it is sustaining. However, if stuck once, the driver reshields and then EXITs the Warthog, the visible damage it sustained converts to physical damage and the Warthog will only require 1 more stick to kill it, but if the driver re-enters the Warthog, the Warthog will once again take 2 sticks to kill it. If a driver with below 100% health/shields or is shieldless enters a Warthog with 100% health and the Warthog gets stuck once, the driver will die before the Warthog is destroyed, and it will only require 1 more stick to destroy it. If a driver with above 100% health/shields or Overshields enters the Warthog, the Warthogs durability amplifies and it will then require 3-4 successive sticks to destroy the Warthog. Also, small arms fire does minimal damage to unoperated vehicles and causes no physical damage to operated vehicles. If shot directly the driver is simply removed from the vehicle if killed.

Halo 3: Has the exact same traits as Halo 2(although now it only takes 1 stick to destroy an unoperated Warthog), except that no matter how long the driver is given to reshield, the visible damage on the vehicle is permanent physical damage and the vehicle’s health will not reset to 100% when the driver reshields.

Halo Reach: Unlike Halo 2 and 3, vehicle health is fully separate from the driver’s health and the damage resistance of the player no longer affects the durability of vehicle, although a single sticky will blow a shieldless driver from a Warthog. It once again takes 2 sticks to kill a Warthog wether operated or not. Small arms fire now causes significant permanent damage to vehicles allowing a group of enemies with small arms to absolutely shred light armored vehicles.

Halo 4: Exact same traits as Halo Reach, although now a single sticky will not always blow a shieldless driver from a Warthog. PP and PG are now spawnable loadout weapons

My conclusion: As I researched this, it became clear to me that both the short-term and long-term durability of vehicles has slowly been reduced over the course of the franchise. With the invisible health-regeneration-when-driver-reshields mechanic from Halo 2 being dropped in Halo 3 causing permanent limited health for vehicles, the high amount of damage small arms do to vehicles since Reach, and the presence of BOTH PP AND PG in loadouts in Halo 4, vehicles have reached their climax of being ruined. Nowadays when I hop into a vehicle, despite being an excellent vehicle operator, I feel like a vehicle is nothing but a powerup that kills me when its time runs out. There is something wrong here.

My answer to fix this problem: Bring back that invisible vehicle health-regeneration-when-driver-reshields mechanic from Halo 2, and make vehicles almost immune to small arms fire again. This will improve vehicle combat significantly.

As a skilled vehicle operator I know that it is not the getting stuck twice in a row(wether PGs are spawned with or not), that ruins vehicle fun for me, but getting stuck once and being doomed to have only 1 more stick kill me later, or having my light vehicle, especially Ghosts and Banshees, being shredded by several enemies with precision rifles and automatics.

A skilled driver should not be punished for winning a battle by being forever doomed with low vehicle health and should not have to worry about being team shot to shreds by small arms weapons. This is why I call for vehicle health to be regenerative again and for vehicles to have very high resistance to small arms fire again.

I believe that this is the key to improving vehicle gameplay along with removing the Plasma Pistol from loadouts. The Plasma grenades can stay because successively sticking a moving vehicle that can react to you instead of being defenselessly frozen in place still takes plenty of skill and coordination with teammates.

This is my opinion and feel free to politely express your own. Thanks for reading!
-SMARTAN 427

2

I agree with everything you said and really appreciate the thought and research you put into this.

To put it simply I am tired of the paper warthogs and ghosts in Halo 4 and the fact that they are near useless and actually hurt your team because a full warthog is now an easy triple kill, and the chain gun overheats before you can do any real damage.

3

> The Plasma grenades can stay because successively sticking a moving vehicle that can react to you instead of being defenselessly frozen in place still takes plenty of skill and coordination with teammates.

i disagree

i encounter many players that have only Plasma grenades, and instead of the Pistol, have the boltshot or something else. Yet i am very easily stuck, even though i am at a decent distance from the enemy, and/or i am moving around.

Plasma Grenades have a MUCH smaller margin for error when compared to Pulse/ Frag grenades.

Compared to Frags, Plasmas only need two Grenades to hit in comparison to the 4+ needed to blow a warthog with Frags. The amount of skill also is majorly different. Yes, you need to lead the throw in order to stick the vehicle, but Plasmas stick to the vehicle, allowing for a much more generous target.

With Frags, you need to time the throw in such a way that the Warthog drives over the Grenade, or throw in such a way that the Grenade lands near the hog at the right time. If you throw a frag, the Operator of the Warthog has a lot of time to react, and can outmaneuver/avoid the Frag grenade if he is paying attention, but with a Plasma grenade, once it’s stuck on you, you can do Literally NOTHING to avoid getting damaged by it. if you throw a Frag Directly at a warthog, it will bounce off and explode in the air, doing nothing most of the time

Pulse Grenades have the potential to destroy an entire warthog with a single Grenade, but require expert timing, as the grenade gives away it’s blast radius a few seconds before it blows, allowing a warthog to very easily avoid damage.

Your suggestion to reverting back to your recorded Halo 2 vehicle status, while it does help vehicles live a lot longer, won’t really help to eliminate the problem in this case.

Like i said, Plasma grenades have the smallest margin for error; they’re very easy to use against vehicles in comparison to the other grenades, meaning that many players fighting against vehicles will choose Plasma Grenades, simply because of its low-skill, but high-reward capacity

Very frequently, a warthog will encounter more than one enemy, and when these enemies both are equipped with plasma Grenades, and are both aware of you, and are both spamming their grenades at you, you’re gonna have at least two plasmas stuck to you. Again, like i said, i have found many players using plasma grenades without the plasma pistol, and it is still very easy to get both grenades stuck on a warthog without team coordination or the plasma pistol to assist.

Your suggestion does, however, allow warthogs to successfully engage SINGLE targets without consequence, but i don’t get into a Warthog to hunt for stragglers and single opponents, i get into a warthog to suppress Infantry, and with Plasma Grenades in loadouts, a Warthog is not able to do this.

4

I definitely agree that vehicles should be more resistant to small arms, but I couldn’t give you a good answer to what extent. I don’t want Warthogs to avoid other players lest they be decimated like in Halo 4, but I also don’t want them to be unstoppable killing machines requiring Power Drainers and Missile Pods to be destroyed like in Halo 3. I’d like them to be vulnerable to it, but not too vulnerable.

> A skilled driver should not be punished for winning a battle by being forever doomed with low vehicle health and should not have to worry about being team shot to shreds by small arms weapons. This is why I call for vehicle health to be regenerative again and for vehicles to have very high resistance to small arms fire again.

I’ve played way too many games of Halo 3 where a Warthog dominated the map and there was nothing the other team can do to stop it. I think that though vehicles should be more resistant to weapons, weapons should be able to slowly whittle away at a vehicle’s health to prevent it from dominating for the entire game.

> The Plasma grenades can stay because successively sticking a moving vehicle that can react to you instead of being defenselessly frozen in place still takes plenty of skill and coordination with teammates.

Are you kidding? Sticking vehicles is easy. Plasma Grenades need to be on-map pickups only.

> With Frags, you need to time the throw in such a way that the Warthog drives over the Grenade, or throw in such a way that the Grenade lands near the hog at the right time.

This is something I really enjoyed doing in Halo: CE and Halo 3: throwing a frag grenade in a Warthog’s path. Unfortunately, in Halo 3, while frag grenades did damage vehicles, they rarely flipped them. I would love for a frag grenade explosion to be forceful enough to flip vehicles again.

5

I think reach had it sort of going in the right direction (bare with me since I still think it was poor in reach)

Reach had it going in the direction that you dont need all thr very large weapons to alter vehilce combat but only the large weapons did. But the actual health was too low and thus warthogs got spammed to death by DMR fire.

As much I want larger vehilce health I disagree with it being linked to player health since vehicles should be able to be whittled down by small arms fire and not be regenerative since it causes it to be a unstoppable killing machine without the correct weapons and it doesnt make realistic sense, but it should require more fire than what it is in reach/ halo 4

6

sorry DP

7

I would like vehicles to be resistant againts small arms fire. Even though I never really like vehicles in shooters (except Mantis; it’s awesome), I found it very silly to allow players to take down vehicles by spending few clips with DRM. It just caused players to go :smiley: instead of :frowning: when they saw Banshee or other light vehicles. It should be the opposite IMO.