
Everyone knows the Vitality perk. For 16 points within the “Vitality” perk column, you can increase your soldier’s hitpoints from 10 to 13.5. Here are the problems with this perk:
- It’s so valuable, it removes any real perk choice.
- For new players with unupgraded or low-vitality rolls, Vitality is unobtainable, leaving veterans at an advantage.
Due to these issues, I would like to propose the following changes:
- Remove Vitality as a perk, but giving every soldier 13.5 hitpoints inherently (even soldier types that currently cannot have 16 Vitality points).
- Replace the Vitality perk with “Flak Jacket”. At the cost of 4 points per upgrade (up to 16 points), you can incrementally increase your soldier’s resistance to explosive fragment damage.

1/4 costs 4 perk points and provides 10% fragmentation damage reduction, 4/4 costs 16 perk points and provides 40% fragmentation damage reduction. This would vastly improve soldier survivability against explosives of all kinds.
Why change the default hitpoints to 13.5?
Most weapon types are balanced around the 13.5 damage threshold.
→ Semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles deal between 13.8 (Type Otsu) and 16.8 (Farquhar-Hill M1918) damage, allowing one-shot kills on soldiers with Vitality at varying ranges (due to damage dropping over distance).
→ “Carbines” deal between 8.8 (M1 Carbine) and 12.6 (Winchester M1907) damage, almost guaranteeing a two-shot kill at any range within 100m (M1 Carbine at 100m: 6.8x2=13.6).
→ Most SMGs deal 6.8 damage, which is a two-shot kill at very close range (6.8x2=13.6).
→ Weapons such as the Fedorov Avtomat and Type Hei Automatic deal 13.9 damage, resulting in a one-shot kill on a soldier with Vitality up to 21 meters.
If other weapon types need tweaking with a universal 13.5 damage health pool, that can be implemented after this change.
- Yes
- No