Quote:
One COM hit from a rifle round, even with soft (below III) armor should pretty much end the game.
Maybe. Maybe not. This is one of my pet subjects, so prepare for a deluge.
There is only one place you can shoot that will cause a 100% stop every time and that is the central nervous system. Brain and heart shots almost always put people down(there are the odd cases where people survive them). Lung shots not so much. A non-fragmenting FMJ round that doesn't yaw will punch a clean hole through the lung. This would be like the wounds from round nosed FMJ rounds described by surgeons like Abbott, Kocher, Markins, Brunner, and LaGarde, which were often survivable in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Unless your lung collapses under tension, you are physiologically capable of fighting until you bleed to death. If medical attention is available, that could be hours off.
The great majority(if not all) of bullets will yaw in enough of a solid medium, coming to rest base first. A round nose bullet can go through the length of several torsos before doing so. A spitzer(pointed) style bullet is different. Most of its mass is to the rear. They yaw much faster, which means you could have a .30 by .75 inch wound instead of a .30 by .30. This can also increase the size of the temporary cavity enough to cause detached muscles, ripped flesh, "exploding" bladders, etc. Such a wound through the lungs is likely to cause a tension Pneumothorax(fancy shmancy term for a collapsed lung), which will probably mean your death in a few minutes.
But bullets yaw inconsistently. A bullet may yaw halfway through a torso on one shot and not at all on another. Maybe it causes a wound that will bleed you out in a few hours, maybe you expire in a few minutes. Maybe it collapses your lung, maybe it doesn't.
If I were in charge(a scary thought), I would make this entirely too complex. Have seperate hit boxes for the lungs and heart(if possible). Heart shot means death. A lung shot gives you a 60 percent chance of a clean wound, which could be survivable. The other 40 percent of the time, your lung collapses and you randomly expire sometime within 5 minutes. You become progressively weaker due to oxygen starvation as your end approaches. Now, I say "could survive" on the clean shots because you begin bleeding immediately. You lose a random amount of blood every 5-10 seconds. You would have a pool of blood to represent the 5~ liters in your average adult. This would take the place of "health." Any time you bleed or are hit between 15 and 40 percent blood loss, you could keel over. You've gone into shock, blood pressure is too low to supply all the vitals, etc. You may not be dead but you will be soon. Any loss exceeding 40 percent causes immediate collapse.
This is why I could never get a job in video games, never mind my lack of applicable skills. They'd fire me after the 5th incredibly complex idea that doesn't really add anything to the game.