RandomGuy

Hahaha.

I'm undecided. To be perfectly honest, it isn't a big issue for me. Just wondering, 'cause you said you bought the HK53 one earlier. I think I prefer the newer one, where it actually is an MP5, but one half to two thirds of them aren't properly armored and are just wearing PASGT vests, and the ones who are properly armored are the ones who get taken out by threats that plated armor wouldn't protect them against (like getting shot in the head, beaten to death by Vorts/Zombies/Grunts, getting blown up, etc.). Makes everything work without any headache.

Black Mesa had enough money to construct a simply ridiculous amount of unnecessary equipment. I doubt they'd just start suddenly trying to save money on the most critical part of the armor the most important scientists are wearing. Hmmm, got any sources for that? I can't seem to find anything on polymer armor plates, or them being standard issue. The CPs don't look like they have any plates, in any case. Their armor would let them take over a dozen bullets to the chest without significant injury? That's completely regular armor used by every cop? The muzzle flash isn't blue, it does the same damage as the 9mm pistol, and it ejects shell casings. They appear to be wearing CP vests, either looted from dead officers or stolen from stocks. They also have the exact same health as the CPs and the Barneys, too. They have 40 hit points, while the Overwatch soldiers/HECU marines have 50. Cool, downloading now. Installation instructions?

I was reading TVTropes on the Half Life page, and a troper said almost the exact same thing you did. Which of course got a lampshade in Shepard's Mind. I think it has something to do with inter-service rivalry, but that's still excessively stupid. I haven't been on TVTropes for well over a year, ever since I got banned, so that's probably coincidence. There's only so many ways you can write out the plot to the game, after all. That still doesn't really make any sense. Killing the people who work at the facility is dumb enough, but there's absolutely no reason to kill the soldiers. The only reason it was done was to give you human enemies, and with the introduction of Race X, especially the tactically smart Shock Troopers, I thought that was unneeded. Just have Race X troops replace the black ops, and introduce a couple new Race X units to replace the black ops machine gun nests and their one attack helicopter. If there's not enough variety, make the Xen aliens have more of a presence too. What do you think of my two "explanations", by the way?

Huh? I was just describing the plot of the game. I've always wondered why they just shot the scientists on sight rather than round them up. Or what the hell the security guards were even for if the military was just going to have them executed the minute things went wrong. Okay, maybe you don't trust the researchers because mad science or whatever. But the guards? How are they so much different than the soldiers? Couldn't you just work WITH them, and/or only take out the researchers directly involved in the incident? You have no reason to not trust the rest of the team about as well as you trust the marines. But of course, it can't go like that. They have to blindly shoot everyone, because the game needed human enemies. Which I'm fine with. Opposing Force's plot was just stupid, though, because there's literally no reason for the black ops to kill the marines. At least the HL1 offered a flimsy excuse, OF doesn't even bother. Anyway, what do you (Pest) think of my two "desperate-reaching-and-trying-to-salvage-a-tiny-shred-of-sense" explanations? Which do you prefer? I think I prefer the second one.

Wow, someone else actually cares about Decay? That doesn't make much sense. Why would ONLY the Xen scientists get helmets? Helmets are really, really important, especially when he's supposed to be wearing a hazmat suit. 1. I'm aware of the distinction between soft and hard armor. But you keep bringing up the MP7's ineffectiveness against hard body armor as evidence of why it would take a lot of shots to kill the CPs, who are wearing soft body armor. What plates do you mean? I thought that plates were used for rifle defense, while the MP7 is specifically designed to get through II-A, II, and III-A armor, where anything above would require hard plates to stop high velocity rifle rounds? 2. And 16 for the 9mm? You're telling me that the average police officer in the 2000s could be shot a dozen times in the torso with a really common military issue type of ammo and be completely fine? I see. Well, I'm of the opinion that something doesn't always have to be hard to be enjoyable. Let's be honest, HL2 in general is an easy game due to the abundance of health packs and allies, as well as the player being OP, even doing more damage with the same weapons than the enemies. Like I said, no big problem for me, I can just modify their health via the console if I want to. So, basically, it's an anti-materiel rifle. And yet, by default, it does 20 damage to Freeman, only slightly more than the regular ol' 7.62x51 from the first game and Opposing Force. Then again, it also does twice as much as the .50 BMG machine gun from those same games. Pulse pistol?...pretty sure it's just a regular pistol that shoots 9mm rounds. M'kay, I'll download it then, play HL2 again (I've been looking for an excuse ever since I overdosed myself on all my recent games), and post my thoughts later. The Antlions being so overwhelmingly fragile sounds it like it would limit any potential difficult despite their high damage. Antlions and rebels must go down quickly then. Luckily, they're unlimited in most cases, so I can just keep throwing fodder at the Overwatch positions until they eventually get overwhelmed. Teamwork: the ultimate sacrifice. That was always one of my favorite parts of the HL series. Just setting NPCs on each other and letting them duke it out. Good to know.

Perhaps. I'll try vanilla HL2 and see how it goes. I was mainly concerned about the Nova Prospekt battle and the Battle of City 17 at the end of HL2. The Synths taking way less rockets to take down balances things out somewhat, but in those instances, it's VERY hard not to get hit, which is bad when they can four-shot you. Also, minor thing, but the Pulse Rifle takes twelve shots to down a Combine Overwatch soldier on Normal, right? 'Cause the damage scale is x1.25? It'd be really weird if Alyx never mentioned the lack of a helmet. She seems casual about it, when he should be risking near-certain death without a helmet (also, it makes no sense that literally every HEV-suited scientist but Gordon would get a helmet). III-A armor is soft armor... and I'm not saying it should just go right through, but is 20 shots really appropriate? Well I disagree, I liked the first few levels. The enemies just being so outmatched [realistically so, as Gordon plowed through over a hundred marines, and these guys are just cops] is really fun to me. I also like racking up a huge body count. You kill about as many CPs in these two chapters as you do marines in ALL of HL1. I also never got bothered by the CPs taking 6-7 shots to down, that seemed realistic enough to me. But it's not that big of a deal, I can just modify the health for these particular enemies via the console. They're not around very much outside of "Route Canal" and "Water Hazard". Any particular reason you don't like the first few levels? On a completely unrelated note that you probably don't care about, and don't have to read: Since we're talking about these two chapters anyway, I just had a random thought. This might be one of the only times in the series where FM!Freeman clearing the section would be more impressive from an in-universe perspective than Canon!Freeman doing the same, assuming he gets that far. Usually it's the opposite, because FM!Freeman's armor makes him immune to most in-game threats, and his enemies are less durable (I've had my theories why). Here, FM!Freeman wouldn't be threatened at all by pistol and SMG bullets, but he'd be in danger of getting one-shotted by APC guns, APC rockets, the Hunter-Chopper's gun, barnacles, and maybe zombies and explosive barrels, going by "Season 1" as I'm now calling it. Canon!Freeman, on the other hand, can take TONS of hits from things that should logically one-shot him, and instantly regenerate from any damage with the embarrassingly common health packs. He is technically threatened by bullets, but only ostensibly due to their low damage, the inaccuracy of the enemies, and, again, the abundance of instant healing health packs. Wasn't saying that it wasn't (unless we're talking about certain guns, which... still do less damage than melee in those games), I just thought it was funny. I didn't say it was like a regular autocannon, just that "autocannon" would be the closest equivalent we have, in terms of general role. I just disagreed that the game mechanics could be used to accurately determine its power, and that it would realistically do nothing to the APCs. It's obviously supposed to be more like an autocannon than an anti-personnel weapon, as again it's scripted to quickly destroy APCs and Hunter-Choppers, which are completely invulnerable to regular bullet firing weapons and take quite a few hits to take down even from rockets. The emplacement guns seen in some places would be the Combine equivalent to a .50 BMG machine gun, as they do about twice as much damage as the Pulse Rifle, which is the Combine equivalent of a 5.56/7.62 assault rifle. Fun fact: going by game play, the Combine APC and Hunter-Chopper are both considerably more durable than the Bradley IFVs from the first game... and even the Abrams! They each take three rocket launcher shots to destroy. In HL1, the rocket launcher's warhead was about the size of Gordon's fist. In HL2, the only reappearing enemies have the exact same health (zombies, headcrabs, barnacles), meaning 1 HL1 hit point = 1 HL2 hit point. This would match up with the enemy roles, too. In both games, the "cops" who wear soft armor have 40 health (Barneys, Metrocops), while the professional soldiers wearing hard body armor have 50 (HECU, Overwatch). Anyway, the HL2 rocket launcher does 200 damage, appropriate considering that the projectile it fires is MUCH larger than the HL1 one. It takes four hits to destroy an APC (in Episode 1) and five hits to destroy a Hunter-Chopper (in Lost Coast). What are you referring to? Its ability to cut zombies in half? Oh, that reminds me. How are Alyx, Barney, and the VM Vortigaunt changed in effectiveness by this mod? Is it possible just to enhance the damage the Combine do against them? If that's not possible, I'd just recommend boosting their health slightly and making them do more damage. Another random question: do the Overwatch soldiers do appropriate damage with their enemies? It always bothered me in HL2 that the Overwatch soldiers with Pulse Rifles only did 3 damage, same as the SMG, when Gordon did 8. I just changed their damage value to 8 in the console, which was much better.

Cool. I will now never obsess over this again... well, not for a while anyway... Good to know. Yeah, the human body takes a long time to give out and can be surprisingly durable. I never said it was perfect, it's just me trying to find some plausibility in this. "He falls and dies instantly rather than slowly bleeding out and fighting for a while" just bothers me less than "he falls and dies instantly even though he's wearing heavy body armor that should make him outright immune to the weapon he's being shot with". I guess here it just bothers me more because it otherwise tries to be somewhat "realistic" as a way to parody the game (e.g. Freeman noticing that he can just climb a seven foot ledge rather than go through a death trap with tentacle aliens, soldiers, mines, and turrets). I know, but I was saying that it would only take a relatively small amount of 9mm bullets to get through (like in the tests I've seen, where for example two bullets to roughly the same area at 10 meters was enough to get through). That's my point. They weren't thinking about what the armor looked like, they just wanted to make the soldiers look intimidating and 'official'. I don't think a minor change like how much body armor some soldiers were wearing is that big of a deal when you consider the changes that have already been made, like Freeman not traversing areas he "canonically" did, the changes to how the HEV suit functions, the addition of the Uplink teleportation sequence, and Freeman's ability to do pull-ups. Hey! Some of the episodes are up to TWELVE minutes! And it's not THAT incompetent. At least, going by the bar HL1's plot already set*. Nor is it even supremely unrealistic. But yeah, I am over thinking things, I admit that. Like I said, I'm just an in-universe freak who tries to get everything to at least make a little bit of sense. It seems I've come up with a theory or two that do just that, so mission accomplished I guess. Anyway, thanks for all of the responses and sources, this has been a very enjoyable conversation. * "We don't trust our top secret researchers, and we need to keep this all secret for some reason, so let's send special forces to kill them along with the aliens. Their families won't notice, we'll just write it off as a... plane accident. Over a thousand people were on the plane. Yeah. Also, let's order them to kill all the security guards, too, so they can't do their jobs. And make sure to shoot them on sight rather than just rounding them up. Then, when that's done, we send OTHER special forces to kill the ones we already sent."

That's a relief, usually the marines cut me to shreds before the tank even has a chance to be a threat. I'll still probably only download the HL2 version of this mod, though. My only concern, aside from the relatively minor points I already brought up, is tearing my hair out during the Strider and Gunship battles. A hazard suit with no helmet would not protect him from radiation. Fair point on the poison damage, but game < story in this case. Things really don't make any sense if Freeman went into the Citadel core with no helmet. 1.-2. Am I? 20 bullets to the chest to kill one guy seems like a lot for soft armor. Isn't the MP7 actually supposed to be more effective against armor anyway? 3.-5. I'm aware, they tend to jump in front of the airboat and stand next to explosive barrels and rickety bridges. I wasn't saying that it sounded overly frustrating or difficult. I just wonder why you made them so durable. Just so they wouldn't be TOO non-threatening with Freeman taking less damage from bullets? Or because you didn't think the original health values, which required 6-7 bullets to kill them on Normal mode, were realistic? It always seemed pretty plausible to me. 4. I guess I could see the value of that from a game play perspective, but I like having options. Especially since the whole point of the early chapters is to mow down like two hundred of them with ease, to underline that the police have no chance against Freeman (you're only really in any danger when they bring in the Hunter-Chopper, aside from being scripted to flee a couple of times when an APC shows up). The environment would still be the best way to take them out even if you could just shoot them to death. Takes less bullets. Oh, alright. Still seems like a lot, though. The crowbar two-shotting guys that can absorb over a dozen bullets reminds me of RPG games, where melee weapons do way more damage than most guns, and it's a perfectly viable strategy to discard shooting enemies in favor of just running up to them and smashing their face with a sword/hammer/stick/power fist/whatever. So are all the CPs that durable in this mod? 'Cause in vanilla HL2, the ones in the first few chapters have 26 health, while the ones in the last few get upgraded to 40. I'm not criticizing the game play decision, just disputing your in-universe view that it's not an autocannon equivalent based on in-game damage stats. Mainly because it's scripted to take out enemies that simple anti-personnel weapons can't take out (APCs and Hunter-Choppers). The sniper rifle doing more damage per shot than it is either just game play, or a testament to how strong the sniper rifle is. They weren't hard in vanilla, but now it seems like you can just point a SMG in their general direction and kill all of them. They're probably just a bit too fragile, having half their base health would be better IMO, but what do I know. Yeah, increased striking power may help a bit, since they're supposed to be glass cannons.

Hugs - Lonely Island I never get tired of listening to their songs.

It has more to do with everything being a damage sponge. Some fights in Black Mesa were ball-bustingly hard (like the fight with the tank and squad of soldiers in the canals) on Hard mode in vanilla, so I can't imagine how tough they'd be here. Also, about the head: Freeman actually does wear a helmet, despite what some concept art may tell you. Unless Alyx considers a hazard suit without a helmet to be excellent protection from radiation. They probably wouldn't be DIFFICULT, since their puny pistols and SMGs can barely hurt you, but still, why let them take so many shots? It'd take like 25 bullets to the chest from the MP7 to kill them. From an in-game perspective, they're just weak fodder enemies you're supposed to kill by the truckload fairly effortlessly (things only get a bit challenging in those chapters when a helicopter starts spraying autocannon fire at you). From an in-universe perspective, they're cops wearing regular soft body armor. Oh, alright. I'd just take that as a game play convenience, like how in HL1 the gun on the attack helicopter does less damage than the pistol, or how the M2 Browning does about ten times less damage than the sniper rifle. It seemed pretty clear to me that the Hunter-Chopper's gun was an autocannon equivalent, as unlike regular anti-personnel weapons (like emplacement guns), it could actually destroy APCs and Hunter-Choppers (non-explosive weapons would otherwise do no damage at all no matter how many hits you landed). Yeah, but that's what I mean- the pistol, SMG, and shotgun are all pretty inaccurate as-is, so having to land so many hits to take down one soldier seems like it'd be frustrating if you ever ran out of Pulse Rifle ammo (which happens a lot). On a related note, does the crossbow still one-shot them? M'kay, that makes more sense. You can't have them being too durable, or else they'd slaughter the Combine easily like they do in vanilla (I like to simply increase Combine weapon damage with the console to get around that slightly). Still, it seems like giving the Antlions such garbage stats would impact the chapters where they're the main enemies. [Also did you forget about the FM durability thread, or get tired of the conversation? It's totally cool if you don't want to continue that anymore, I just wanted to know since you said you'd respond a couple days ago]

Dark Corners of the Earth? Well, that's my guess, even if it's probably wrong.

As I said, he'd only have to produce roughly one episode per week starting now. He's shown the ability to produce an episode every four days, during the Power Up arc, so this shouldn't be impossible. He seems pretty confident.

The HL and HL2 modifications look interesting. I was thinking about downloading this for Black Mesa, but upon replaying it on Hard recently, I remember that it's so freaking difficult even in vanilla that these changes would probably just make me tear my hair out. I know the point is to make the game more difficult, but that seems really, really damage-spongey for regular, fodder, early-game enemies. With this much health, the pistol take twenty shots to the chest to kill them on NORMAL difficulty. So the APC can pretty much one-shot you now? Random question: the gun on the Hunter-Chopper seems to be the Combine equivalent to a helicopter-mounted autocannon. Can one of those taken down an APC/IFV in real life? I always thought the Overwatch soldiers were kinda underpowered in the vanilla game, so that's good. Only problem is this would pretty much make every gun except the Pulse Rifle (which, assuming it's the assault rifle equivalent, would take a roughly-realistic 15 chest shots to kill, assuming the soldiers are wearing high quality armor) useless. Unless that part about head shots being x20 in HL2 wasn't a typo. This one really bothers me, honestly. I agree that the Antlions were overpowered compared to the Combine soldiers in the vanilla game, due to them being scripted to kill Overwatch soldiers in one hit, but I think this is going too far in the opposite direction. One of the most fun parts about HL2, in my opinion, was having a variety of allies to help you out in battle. Vortigaunts, Antlions, rebels, turrets, snipers, Barney, the works. From a story perspective, Antlions are also supposed to be a huge threat, so huge that they effectively overrun the Combine when the rebels can't. If these stats are accurate, then the Antlions are completely useless at even taking down lone Combine soldiers in the regular groups of five, and the sections of the game where you fight them would be laughably easy. Their health and damage should have been higher IMO. I would have just decreased their stats ony slightly, removed whatever makes them kill Combine soldiers in one hit, modify the Combine so they do proper damage with their weapons (for some reason, the Combine soldiers do way less damage than Freeman does with the same weapons), and just have them do increased damage to Combine soldiers (maybe three-shotting instead of one-shotting?).

Ross would only have to produce one Freeman's Mind episode per week to meet the deadline, assuming he works non-stop and the Halloween Game Dungeon episode takes less than a week. He's shown that he can produce episodes even faster than that, i.e. in the Power Up arc. So, he could probably be done with the first Half-Life game by December 31st, 2014. Then again, considering how he just got $18,000+ in donations, it's not like a few $20 bets are really going to matter even if he can't.

Again, that's fine. I'll just be grateful if you respond at all!

That's possible then. I'm not really too attached to the date. Could be early 2004 instead. Maybe mid 2003. I think I prefer that, as the switch to Interceptor had just begun (so it's very plausible that these guys could still be wearing PASGT), and the build-up of forces in the region in preparation for the war would be significant. Combine that with the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan, and the continued US deployments in Europe and east Asia, and bam, the troops in New Mexico aren't as good or well equipped as they could be. Not to say that the troops sent to Black Mesa in FM were the absolute WORST the US military had (they wouldn't get plates at all in that case, nor would they get stuff like Abrams tanks), but they're definitely not at the top of the stock... In the test you showed me of the PASGT, we saw the frame behind the vest get f'd up by the impact even when the vest stopped the rounds, and the guys testing it commented on the guy wearing it getting injuries like a broken back. In numerous other tests I've seen, when talking about higher caliber pistol rounds, the tester would comment that, even though the PASGT would STOP the round, the impact would probably kill the wearer anyway. Did they not know what they were talking about? In any case, most of them get shot enough times in the same general area to justify them dying or getting taken down. Maybe not as quickly as they are, and maybe not all of them, but generally it works. On top of that, they are in the New Mexico desert, so it's possible their soft armor may have deteriorated to level II-A or II at this time, like in the tests I've seen (e.g. http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-294684.html / http://www.savvysurvivor.com/PASGTarmortest.htm) i.e. enough to stop maybe 2-3 9mm NATO bullets, but wouldn't hold up to the amount of fire Freeman usually slings at them, especially at close range. This is important, as a lot of the times he fires SMG bursts into them at near point blank range (e.g. the three guys at the end of episode 12, the "run around the corner" guys). Yeah, but there were two wars going on at the time. Like I said, this theory would be assuming that many of the troops at Black Mesa didn't get plates (not too far fetched, as the stock of plates was fairly low at the time, there were many troops who were much more deserving of rifle protection, and the military wasn't expecting a full-on alien invasion), and many more of the ones that did just chose not to wear them (also not too far fetched; many of the troops in Mogadishu didn't get back plates, and many more that did still chose not to wear them), resulting in only about a quarter to a third of the soldiers being properly armored. The properly armored soldiers are the ones that Freeman is lucky enough to hit in the head (good thing half of them, as in 3/4 of the models used, don't wear helmets!). Or the ones that get headcrab'd (again, no helmet; I don't know what beret marine, cigar marine, and balaclava marine have against head protection). Or the ones that get poisoned. Or the ones that get beaten to death by super strong aliens (we see Grunts, Vorts, and Zombies do that in some episodes; considering they can smash through concrete, this isn't surprising). Or the ones that get thornet'd. Or the ones that get burned to death. Or the ones that get shot by Freeman when he's using a .50 cal. Or the ones that get blown up (either by Freeman or each other) by things like hand grenades, 40mm grenades, and mines. Or the ones that get killed by other hazards hard body armor wouldn't make them immune to (fell an extraordinary height, crushed by rocks, mowed down by a 5.56 turret, etc.). Probably. But the soldiers in general seem to be oddly proportioned compared to the other human NPCs (they look even bulkier thanks to their backpacks), so if you (like me) just want to not be bothered, you can just assume it's another graphical lapse (I'd even say that, if the designers of this game had any armor in mind when making the marine models, which they probably didn't, it was the PASGT; this was '98). Plus, he seldom spends much time focusing on the soldier models for that to be noticeable anyway. Keep in mind this is my theory for Freeman's Mind, not Half-Life (I'm just assuming the HD pack was canon there). Freeman's Mind obviously changes some things about the base Half-Life universe, including how Freeman's suit functions (for the most part, it's really high quality but otherwise regular plated body armor, rather than powered armor that can oddly both fall to pistol rounds and survive autocannon fire) and how Freeman went through Half-Life (Ross skips some sections, and added in the Uplink teleportation sequence). In Freeman's Mind, I'm assuming these soldiers were just "what's left" as Freeman speculated in episode 59 rather than the well-equipped, top-of-the-line special forces they were in Half-Life itself (or at least Opposing Force). His description of them as "literally mentally retarded" is an exaggeration (they're just stupid in a somewhat realistic way), and they're not BADLY equipped by any means (this theory would still have them getting some plates, after all, when most troops wouldn't have those), but the point is they're not the best the military has to offer, so they're not as well equipped or competent as they could be because of that. The military wasn't really expecting a full invasion, just a clean-up operation for the wildlife, scientists/guards (who would be armed with pistols or shotguns, and wearing light II or II-A armor), and some of the humanoid stragglers. So they thought that a bunch of guys with soft PASGT armor, shotguns, and submachine guns, supported by some choppers, would be enough to cover everything up. Few initially had plates, and fewer still chose to wear them (an example of someone who did could be the first soldier Freeman encountered, and who he shot in the face). After things got out of control due to an organized attack by the Xenian military (Vortigaunts/Grunts/Gargantuas/Flyers), the military started rolling in the big guns (howitzers, bombers, tanks, more troops with sniper rifles and .50 cals, etc.). Yet they still couldn't give plates to more than half of the soldiers they sent, simply because they didn't have any on hand, weren't expecting such heavy resistance, and weren't expecting to have to deploy so many troops. As a result, most of the soldiers Freeman encounters throughout the game are only wearing soft II-A/II/III-A armor. Even worse, a lot of the soldiers are dumb, so a lot of the soldiers that got plates just chose not to wear them, bringing the "properly armored" portion of the force closer to a quarter or a third. To make things EVEN WORSE, a bunch of the soldiers didn't even wear helmets (which they should ALL have been issued), even if they wore plates. That's fine, I didn't expect one anyway.

Unrelated to the video itself, but is there a reason that the Game Dungeon is still listed under "Other Videos" in the forums, and none of the episodes are listed under the "Movies" section? I actually DO have money riding on this with a friend. It's only ten bucks, though.

Not sure what to say about this one other than "great video". Not really laugh-out-loud, "haha" funny, but a lot of your little comments did draw chuckles, and I enjoyed seeing such a mixed game on the show.

Shepherd's probably a special case. The default soldier model seems to wear a different vest than the one Shepherd wears, and he has four times their hit points at full charge. The US military doesn't use 9mm AP. The standard is 9mm NATO, which as far as I know can get through a PASGT with a few hits in the same general area, or maybe take down the wearer with multiple hits all over the body.

That is a question that can't be answered. It's a kevlar vest. If the shots are real close it might only be two or three. It they're all over it might be dozens. And for the record, III-A requires stopping a .357 Sig and a .44 magnum. Not that hard. That 12-gauge slug is harder to stop than both of those combined. If it stopped a 12-gauge slug, it's a III-A. Let me explain what's different between this test and others. This vest they are testing is fairly new. It is not old, or worn, or damaged. And that REALLY matters in armour, especially in a PASGT vest. Most PASGT vests on the civilian market are used, so most tests of them are on used vests. Kevlar deteriorates very quickly, especially in sunlight as it is damaged by ultraviolet radiation. After being used on tour and then put up on the civilian market, it absolutely will be a lot weaker. Especially with a PASGT vest. PASGT was the first military armour made of kevlar. They didn't know jack shit about how to treat kevlar then. The kind of kevlar used had a very low resistance to UV damage, and the outer fabric provided almost no UV protection. PASGT vests were then taken out to the middle of the desert where the sun bore down on them at all times and deteriorated. Then these deteriorated vests were taken and sold on the civilian market when they were phased out. That's where the testing vids come from, old and deteriorated PASGT vests. I just showed you an unused, fairly fresh vest and what it'll do. The PASGT vest isn't shitty because it doesn't work as a bulletproof vest. It's shitty because it wasn't built properly for what it was used for. It wasn't designed to stop rifles, the military didn't understand kevlar couldn't stop shrapnel, and took this vest that already couldn't do the job it needed to or the job it was meant to and put it in an environment that absolutely destroys it. If they just wanted a vest to stop pistol fire then they'd just need to replace it often and it would have been fine, but they needed a vest that could defend against rifles and shrapnel and survive in a desert, and that is why the PASGT vest had to go. If multiple shots are placed around the vest, it can take a while to break, but the blunt force trauma should have an effect long before that, yes? I see. Well, alternate theory to the HK53 one: that really is an MP5. However, due to the unit deployed to Black Mesa being "what's left", and it only being... let's say 2002, they're using PASGT vests and helmets, and requisition issues and lack of stock (the units in Afghanistan would probably take top priority) mean a lot (let's say half) of the troops don't get the rifle-proof plates (that's not super out there, right? After all, many troops in Mogadishu didn't get back plates when they were fully expected to engage in combat, and many of the ones who did still only wore front plates). They're not viewed as priority anyway, as any potential Black Mesa clean-up operation is not only unlikely, but from the government's point of view will likely involve only cleaning up wildlife and the occasional stranded Xenian soldier, rather than a full-on invasion by troops hard armor might help against. Of those that do have plates, many more (let's say half) have just chosen not to wear them to save on weight, both because they weren't expecting much resistance where they were, and because they're dumb (although, technically not unrealistically dumb). The last quarter do in fact wear the plates. However, these tend to be the ones who Freeman manages to hit in the face (we see him do that tons of times, or at least see blood puffs come from the head area, and in many more cases we don't see the bullet impacts and can assume that to be the case). The others are either killed or incapacitated by multiple 9mm NATO rounds to their armor, with many more likely impacting unarmored parts like the legs ("Freeman's actually hitting guys he's technically missing in-game at long range" can also come into play here). From the tests I've seen, it only takes a couple of shots to the same general area for a 9mm to break the vest, and the PASGT doesn't protect against blunt force trauma as well it could anyway. The plate-wearers get shot in the head. About 3/4 of the troops are just wearing soft armor and get killed/incapacitated by a handful of 9mm NATO shots each*. Buckshot killing the soldiers still makes no sense. 9mm and buckshot have no effect on Freeman's armor. 7.62x51, likely what the snipers are using, can dent the armor and leave welts on Freeman through it, and could probably get through it if they shot him enough times. The .50 BMG machine guns that Gordon is cautious of (and Ross seems to think can kill him) can shatter his armor and significantly wound him with one hit, taking him out of the fight and bringing him pretty close to death, and surely kill him with anything more. And, of course, autocannons (like the one used by the Bradley) can "turn [him] into red paste". *I've counted, and it only takes three shots in FM to kill a soldier, but he typically keeps shooting them after the game registers them as 'dead', so we can assume that in this universe at least the soldiers usually take more than three shots, but not much more. Does any of that sound remotely plausible? In either case, I'll soon post some comments on your mod's thread. I just re-installed Black Mesa, so my interest in it has been further piqued.

III-A yes, according to the military. And your test video specifies it was a heavily used vest tested, and gets II-A and II totally ass-backwards. Here's an actual test of an unused vest. And why yes, it's a III-A. The guys testing it were mystified when it stopped a 12-gauge slug. I've seen that test before (it's the first result that comes up when you search "PASGT test"), and that other video wasn't the only other test I've seen. But pretty much every test I've seen ends with the tester rating that armor as II-A or II. I'm not sure I've ever seen it rated III-A. It was supposed to be crap compared to the IBA vest, which was III-A, but maybe that has something to do with the increased shrapnel protection. That video was pretty impressive compared to the other showings I've seen, especially considering how damaged it already was, but the blunt force trauma looks like it'd be significant. Okay, last question in this thread: if you had to give an estimate, how many pistol bullets (let's say standard 9mm NATO) would you say the PASGT would be able to stop at say 10-15 meters? How many shots before the wearer is significantly injured?

Typically, I do look these things up- it's just when you make a claim on something I've never heard or found no information on (like the RBA plates being inferior to later ones or .50 BMG being survivable) that I have to ask for a source. III-A on its own? That doesn't sound right, at least not going by the sources I've seen, including testing videos like this one:

Saints Row IV. It was pretty good.

Wait, the PASGT's plates were less shitty than the old RBA ones? I thought you said they were the same? Waiting for that. 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. Well of course soft armor won't stop a rifle (discounting extreme circumstances). I was more wondering why it was so underpowered against shrapnel. 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. 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? Of course not, but you can assess damage like that in other ways than making a person get shot. Yep, but unlikely thing happens all the time. I was basically wondering if just once in the entire history of modern warfare, someone wearing level IV hard armor got hit in the chest with a non-armor piercing .50 BMG round and lived after being incapacitated with only significant wounds. 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.