Over 66,000 MM kills and, according to my commendations, I have a total of 67 vehicle kills + driving assists. I'm gonna go with no.
That's kinda crazy. You do actually play a little BTB though. Do you just prefer sniping/DMRing? I like sniping but there's always a very annoying race for the sniper, and it's too dangerous to let some idiot lose our wraith or give the enemy the neutral banshee. So I tend to prioritize getting control of those when I play BTB (which isn't often, lately).
I play Anniversary BTB more than I do regular, and both Ridgeline and Breakneck are much more suited to doing well on foot than the majority of regular BTB playlist maps. But honestly I just really don't enjoy vehicles much at all, my friend Jack loves to Hog and is always trying to convince me to drive or gun, but I rarely do. Idk, I'd just prefer to bop around with a DMR, and if there's a Sniper available I'll take that over any vehicle. Banshee and Gauss Hog are the only vehicles I really pay much attention to controlling (aside from Scorpion but I haven't played a map with one on in months), and for the most part my friend will rush that whilst I go for power weapons off spawn. To be honest, if I did rush important vehicles off spawn, I'd end up being the idiot you refer to, Banshee's etc. are genuinely wasted on me. However, I'm a passable Goose driver and will happily do so in objective games etc., and I jump on the Goose off spawn at the start of every single game on Ridgeline, even if that's only to get to Sniper first That said, even I think it's stupid how effective Snipers are against vehicles. There's absolutely no reason for it other than to help balance things like the Banshee, and a much better solution would have been to just balance the damn thing properly in the first place.
Oh, total agreement from me on that one. It's seriously irritating how the sniper is basically a god-weapon in BTB. Bad enough that it can kill infantry in one shot from any distance (and with a bigger hitbox for headshots than in old Halo games, I think), but it also gets to be an anti-vehicle weapon that's almost as effective as the laser, and arguably MORE effective than the plasma launcher? Crazy design decision.
Oh hell I'd take a Sniper over a Plas Launcher for taking down vehicles any day, and not just because I'm more used to it. Head hitboxes were the same, if not slightly bigger, in Halo 2. However, through a combination of faster movement making aiming a little more difficult and, let's face it, nostalgia, it was easier to ignore/forget. However, Halo 3 and CE had, as you say, much smaller hitboxes.
Pretty much. The only downside is the waste of ammo, but you get basically infinite range, instantaneous shot speed, and it chews right through tin cans like the ghost and the banshee - which are hard to hit with the plasma launcher, even should they briefly venture close enough to get in locking range. I expect you're right about the hitboxes. It's been a while since I busted out H2.
I agree, and they seemed to take that into consideration when adding vehicles to maps. Not only would the banshee not have enough threats if the sniper didn't damage vehicles, but the wraith on hemorrhage wouldn't either- it can be destroyed by other means, but the chances decrease so drastically if they make the simple decision to defend their base and the wraith's teammates are halfway decent, preventing enemies from swarming the base. It takes some of the fun out of using the wraith though, because there is so little room to hide from the sniper; whether you have the wraith or not is simply their decision to snipe infantry or not. With a couple of DMRs there is enough time to react, making it fun. I wouldn't mind at all if the BR(?) did damage to vehicles in H4, but they made anti-vehicle weapons less powerful and made point and shoot (the most effective infantry weapons) more effective against vehicles, which are massive, easy targets. The rocket launcher, the spartan laser, and the plasma launcher (from missile pod) have all been weakened against vehicles. Rockets are now much more likely to kill infantry (it can't kill a fresh hog/rev/falcon, 2 can't kill tanks, banshees can shake a lock on with loops). Plasma grenades and the grenade launcher (previously the power drain) are not as worthwhile now because they aren't as easy to pull off as firing bullets. It turns out that a vehicle's health will not go all the way down to .1 units and stay there, it will slightly recharge if it is left alone, sort of like the H3 occupant shields system, to reward those who can escape before taking so much damage even at minimal health, as opposed to rewarding ditching the vehicle, except there is no visual meter for players to even know that this happens (the vehicle would always appear to be in its most damaged state). I preferred the H3 system.
Is that right? I had a great overkill one time on one of the community BTB maps when I locked on to a falcon from across the map and fired a lone rocket. It turned out there were people in both gunner seats AND a guy riding on top with a bomb, and the thing exploded, taking them all out. But I don't know if it might have been slightly damaged beforehand. That's interesting, I didn't know that.