Damage zones + armor vs. health questions

Apheirox

<div class="IPBDescription">Where to aim?</div>Hi NS2. :)

The answer is probably obvious (aim for the head) but I noticed there is a huge difference in the damage one deals with Skulk bites supposedly dependent on where one aims (I think the range is as large as 25-75 points of damage - quite the difference). Can somebody provide a rundown on what 'damage zones' work like so I'll know where to bite the tasty humans next time I run into one? If it's different for the various classes I'd like a full rundown, if possible - I suspect the Onos, for instance, also takes hugely different amounts of damage depending on where you hit it.

Also, I'd like to know what the difference between health and armor is?

Thanks!

Volcano

aiming for the head does nothing, center of the screen for skulk is 75 damage the rest is glancing damage which means you havent got the marine in the middle of your bite which takes the damage down to 55(?) and 25 for almost a miss

Dghelneshi

Damage zones would be totally ridiculous in this game. Having to bite the head of a marine when you're barely taller than his knees and vice versa having to shoot the head of a small creature as fast as a racing car (yes I exaggerate a bit) would result in combat being based on pure luck. Dice roll games are usually not very fun (at least for me).

Health and armor are a bit complicated (and counter-intuitive) right now. There are different damage types which do different amounts of damage to players, structures and health/armor. Almost all weapons have a "normal" damage type, which requires 2 points of damage to take away 1 point of armor, the pistol and mines do light damage which has a ratio of 4 damage per armor and the minigun does heavy damage, which results in a 1:1 ratio.

E.g.: Skulks have 70 health and 10 armor. Against normal damage they have 90 effective health, resulting in 9 rifle bullets required for a kill. The pistol does 25 damage per shot but needs 5 shots to kill a Skulk since against light damage the armor counts 4 times as much, so the Skulk has 110 effective health for pistols (and mines). This makes the pistol extremely weak against full armor creatures and buildings and only effective as a "finisher" when no armor remains on the target. 70% of the damage done is applied to armor before deducting health.

There are other damage types like structural, biological, corrosion, puncture, gas and flame damage, but they do interact with armor the same as normal damage.
<ul><li>Structural damage does double damage against structures and is used by the axe, grenade launcher, exosuit claw and the normal whip attack.</li><li>Biological damage is used by healspray and only damages biological units (i.e. players).</li><li>Corrosion damage is used by bile bomb and whip bombard and interacts with structures normally, but only damages armor on players and does so at a reduced rate (10% damage for normal players, 20% damage to exos).</li><li>Puncture damage is used by the Fade's swipe and technically by the Onos gore (horn) ability and does 25% more damage against players. The Onos gore switches over to smash on non-biological units though (which does 100 structural damage), so that's kind of irrelevant.</li><li>Gas damage only damages player health (thus does not damage Exos at all!).</li><li>Flame damage is used by welders and flame throwers (duh) and does 700% damage against cysts, clogs and bone walls.</li></ul>

Apheirox

Thank you both for the conclusive answers. +rep.