Vs Saxton Hale

[UGC-Gaming]

The VS Saxton Hale Mode, also known as VSH, is an unofficial "Juggernaut" variation of Arena Mode, in which an entire team of mercenaries is pitted against one player in a battle to the death. Whilst the primary rules of kill or be killed still apply, the modification involves the lone player taking on the role of an overpowered Saxton Hale (or other "boss" character), contending against the rest of the players as the other team until either the boss or all of the mercenaries die. Occasionally the teams may switch, to allow the team-colored models for Vagineer and Christian Brutal Sniper to appear and to generally vary things a bit.

The mod was created by Lizard Of Oz (formely known as "Dr. Eggman") and the Random Fortress community in October 2010. Some updates (August/September 2010) to the mod were done in collaboration with FlaminSarge. Later, in July 2014, Chdata took over main development of the game mode and has opened to contributions via Github. Saxton Hale is voiced by Dreux "Druox" Ferrano Jr.

Maps for this gamemode start with the prefix vsh.

Gameplay demonstration​

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Gameplay​

Note: Gameplay may change accordingly across different servers, due to the main VS Saxton Hale plugin being an open source project for anyone to fork their own edits to their liking. This page only covers the default version of the game mode and thus may be different from edited versions of the game mode.

Because the game mode is based on Arena, dead players cannot respawn until the next round starts. The boss, a reskinned Soldier, is usually restricted to using melee swings or Mantreads stomps but is granted with a very large health pool. Most bosses default to a +210% damage increase, giving 3.1x the base damage of 65, allowing them to hit 202 damage (rounded from 201.5, which is still used for internal math checks in the game). This damage allows them to one hit kill most classes, except for Heavy who starts with 300 HP by default and other classes like Soldier if they are overhealed enough to overcome the boss' damage. This can vary if the server enables damage spread and random crits.

A control point on the map will either enable after a certain elapsed time, or when the number of RED team players has dropped to a certain amount, depending on the server's settings. At this point, either team is able to capture the control point and win the round.

In order to reward risky close-range combat with the boss, all melee weapons (excluding the Spy's melee weapons and Market Gardener) are given a constant Crit boost. Many actions that would instantly kill a normal player, such as a backstab, will only deal a large amount of damage to the boss rather than killing him outright.

Backstabs in this case, have a formula that scales how much damage is dealt based on the boss' max health. In a 1 versus 1 or 1 versus 2 scenario, backstabs can hit for around 60% of the boss's health. Granted, it tends to be much harder to pull one off when the boss has less players dividing his attention. In a 1 versus 31 scenario, backstabs will hit about 10% of the boss' health. The boss itself gains a slight resistance to backstabs for every backstab it receives, reducing the damage of the next backstab from any player.

Unless bosses other than Saxton Hale are disabled by the server, the boss player has a chance to become one of the various different boss characters from the game mode; most of these alternate bosses are varieties of internet memes or fads. Whilst several exclusive skins appear on specific servers (such as the Demopan), the core version of the mod includes a playable Horseless Headless Horsemann Junior (a smaller, player-sized HHH), the Vagineer, the Christian Brutal Sniper and the Easter Bunny, a completely original character. Meanwhile, other bosses have been created and developed based on internet celebrities (mostly memes), Valve characters (such as those from Portal), other TF2 NPCs (Announcer) and more.

Versus Saxton Hale's boss selection is weighted to select Saxton Hale the majority of the time, or roll a dice that will equally select from the other bosses.

Boss abilities​

In order to provide balance for the greatly outnumbered boss, several abilities are available to the boss player. These include:

• Superjump: By crouching or alt-firing, looking up and releasing crouch/alt-fire, the player will be propelled upwards and usually forward, depending on the pitch (up and down angle) of the player's view upon activation. Generally, crouch super jumping is less beneficial than alt-fire super jumping because it loses the ability to have a "running start" when activating the jump.
  • The Horseless Headless Horsemann Jr.'s Superjump is replaced with the ability to teleport the boss to a random enemy. The teleport takes longer to 'charge', and the boss is stunned for a few seconds after teleporting, giving his prey a chance to escape. The boss's clipping against enemy players is also removed for a short time after teleporting, to prevent the target from getting stuck inside of him. For balancing reasons, the clipping is not removed if the target is a Scout or Soldier. It is still possible for them to not get stuck anyway, due to TF2's physics.
• Super Duper Jump: A variation of the "Superjump" that protects the boss from instant death or becoming trapped by falling into a precipice. This usually activates when the boss is stuck in a environmental damage zone, and such will be able to activate it with Superjump keys. Some maps, such as Nucleus, may instead teleport the boss to spawn instead of granting Super Duper Jump due to the difficulty of being able to jump out of the pit. This per-map behavior is configurable by the server.
  • The Horseless Headless Horsemann Jr.'s Super Duper Jump always causes him to be instantly teleported to spawn. For the first minute, he will only be teleported to his own spawn. After that, he can appear at either spawn. Maps configured to teleport all bosses to spawn (instead of granting Super Duper Jump) also follow this behavior.
• Rage: As the boss takes damage, his rage meter will fill. This generally defaults to 3500 damage being 100% rage, and is configurable by the server. The ability can be triggered either by taunting or by calling Medic and will scare all nearby players, halve nearby Sentry Guns' health while disabling them temporarily, and deal 1 damage to Dispensers and Teleporters, which is able to alert the Engineer who built them that a rage was used as the damage will reflect on his HUD. The boss will also gain a 4 second defense buff after using rage that reduces all incoming damage by 33%. The stun lasts for 5 seconds and the distance of effect defaults to 800 hammer units, but varies per boss. For example, the Vagineer, Christian Brutal Sniper, and Easter Bunny all have severely reduced rage distance due to the other special effects their rages have.
  • The Vagineer's rage ability stuns players in a smaller range than Hale's and grants him an ÜberCharge, protecting him from all incoming damage. Air blasting the Vagineer while he's Übered (raging) increases the length of the uber by about one second.
  • The Christian Brutal Sniper's rage ability gives him a modified Huntsman that allows him full movement speed while charging up an arrow, but also has a small stun range.
  • The Easter Bunny's rage ability causes him to dance and fire explosive eggs in every direction, temporarily disabling his melee attack. The eggs behave like Loose Cannon cannonballs. For every person the Easter Bunny kills, golden eggs will appear, granting 3 seconds of Crits to players that pick them up; this can be used in combination with the Easter Bunny's rage effect to create a barrage of Crit boosted grenades.
• Escape Plan Effect: All bosses' movement speed increases as they take more damage, which adds to their already increased starting speed.
• Mantreads Effect: If the boss meets the requirement for a Mantread stomp, it will generally always result in an instant kill due to having the +210% damage bonus on top of it. The damage tends to vary based on how much fall damage the boss would have taken (despite bosses being immune to fall damage unless it's strong enough to kill them). Some servers commonly use a "Goomba Stomp" plugin that allows much easier "head crushing" kills to occur. As a reference to Mario from Nintendo, it defaults to triggering by merely jumping on an enemy's head as opposed to having to fall far enough to take fall damage. A Spy using the Dead Ringer or the Invisibility Watch and a Medic with an activated ÜberCharge can potentially survive a mantread or goomba stomp.
• Weighdown: After being airborne for five seconds, looking down and holding crouch will force the boss down to the ground to prevent getting stuck from constant knockback. Weighdown also gives the boss 6x gravity for a short time, to further augment sticking him to the ground.
• Anchor: While crouching on the ground, the boss gains 100% immunity from damage induced knockback. Very useful to prevent being knocked out of vents and other small areas that can only be traversed while crouching, or avoid being knocked off small pillars.

Strategy​

Main article: Community VS Saxton Hale strategy

Balancing​

The bosses' initial health increases based on the number of players taking part in the game. This health is calculated as the nearest integer to [(760.8+n)×(n-1)]1.0341 + 2046, where n is the initial number of players on the non-boss team and 2046 is the base health.

Saxton Hale (and other bosses) Health

Number of players on the server	Health gain per player before base health add	Max (spawn) health of boss
1	0	2046
2	478	3003
3	654	4007
10	938	11425
17	1010	19210
23	1046	26095
30	1077	34343
31	1080	35539

Some weapons equipped by Mercenaries will be changed into their default counterparts or edited for balance issues:


All classes

• All melee weapons excluding Spy's Knives, the Market Gardener and the Holiday Punch are Crit boosted.

Scout

• The Shortstop's effects are applied even without deploying the weapon.
• The Soda Popper and the Baby Face's Blaster are not allowed and replaced with the Scattergun.
• All pistols are Mini-crit boosted.
• The Bonk! Atomic Punch is not allowed and is replaced with the Crit-a-Cola.
• The Crit-a-Cola grants full Crits instead of Mini-crits.
• The Flying Guillotine is Crit boosted.
• The Candy Cane causes a small Health pack to appear on hit.
• The Fan O' War removes 5% of the boss's rage per hit.
• The Wrap Assassin has two baubles instead of one.

Soldier

• All Soldier primary and secondary weapons (excluding the Cow Mangler 5000 and the Righteous Bison) will perform Mini-crits against an airborne boss (the weapons Mini-crit airborne targets for up to 99999 seconds after weapon switch).
  • The Direct Hit performs Crits instead of Mini-crits.
  • The Reserve Shooter performs Crits in place of Mini-crits, has a +10% damage bonus, and has 3 ammo in clip instead of 4.
• The Rocket Jumper is not allowed and is overridden with the Rocket Launcher.
• The Air Strike gains additional clip for every 200 damage dealt with the Air Strike itself.
• The Gunboats reduce fall damage by 90%.
• The Mantreads reduce fall damage by 90%, increase rocket jump force by 1.8x and deal 1024 damage to bosses upon landing on their head. On servers with the Goomba Stomp plugin, it may be possible to register both a Mantread Stomp and Goomba Stomp simultaneously.
• The Battalion's Backup grants 75% knockback resistance. The meter will fill as normal, but will also do so instantly after surviving any hit from the boss. When activated, it grants Crit immunity and 80% damage resistance against bosses' attacks.
• The B.A.S.E. Jumper reduces damage of Market Gardens by 33% when active. A successful Market Garden will disable the parachute if it is active, however it can be re-deployed instantly.
• The Half-Zatoichi heals +35 health on hit and can overheal the player by up to +25 health. The weapon can be sheathed after a hit.
• The Market Gardener does damage similar to backstabs on a market garden, except scaled lower for balancing purposes. After successfully landing a market garden, the Soldier must blast jump again before being able to do another.

Pyro

• When a Compression Blast is used on any boss, the boss will gain 4% rage. In addition, using the Compression Blast on the Vagineer while he is ÜberCharged will take extra Ammo and will lengthen the time of the Vagineer's rage.
• All Flare Guns are Crit boosted.
• The Phlogistinator disables Flare Gun Crits and deals 50% less damage while not under effect of the MMMPH buff.
• The Flare Gun and Detonator are replaced with a "Mega-Detonator", a customized Detonator that allows for a very large flare jump at the expense of greater self-damage from explosions. The flare jump will propel the user a large distance regardless of whether it is detonated via alt-fire or via the flare exploding on contact with an object.
• The Manmelter Revenge Crits do 2.5x damage. Incidentally, there are no opportunities to ignite players in the default version of the game mode that are eligible Revenge Crits other than the rare ignited Christian Brutal Sniper arrow or dedicated map element, often rendering the ability useless.
• The Axtinguisher and Postal Pummeler behave like the Fire Axe.
• The Powerjack gives the Pyro +25 health on hit and can overheal the player up to +50 health.
• The Third Degree will add +10% ÜberCharge per hit to any Medics healing the player. This 10% is split among multiple Medics. If a Pyro is able to constantly hit the boss while under the effects of a Medic's Übercharge, it is possible to prolong it infinitely.

Demoman

• The Ali Baba's Wee Booties and the Bootlegger reduce fall damage by 90% and deal 1024 damage to bosses upon landing on their head under valid Mantread stomp conditions.
• The Chargin' Targe, Splendid Screen and Tide Turner block one hit from any boss, after which they are removed from the player for the duration of the round. All shields grant the player with either a Crit or Mini-crit boost for their Grenade Launcher, depending on the server's configuration.
• The Sticky Jumper is not allowed and is replaced with the Stickybomb Launcher.
• The Eyelander, Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker and Nessie's Nine Iron gain heads on each hit.
• The Half-Zatoichi heals +35 health on hit and can overheal the player by up to +25 health. The weapon can be sheathed after a hit.

Heavy

• The Natascha is not allowed and is replaced with the Minigun.
• The Killing Gloves of Boxing, the Gloves of Running Urgently and the Bread Bite are modified to allow the Heavy to run at +50% greater speed, but deal 7 damage per second while active. They do not inherit any other penalties from the Gloves of Running Urgently.
• The Fists of Steel are not allowed and are replaced with Fists.
• The Holiday Punch has no stun effects. It does not gain a Crit boost as other melee weapons do, but can still perform its laugh on Crit ability, though the effect will only last for 0.1 seconds on the boss (with the exception of a Vagineer who has used his rage ability).

Engineer

• Metal from pickups is limited, as all Ammo crate pickups are converted to the small variation.
• All bosses' rage deals 1 damage to Teleporters and Dispensers, indicating whether rage was used nearby.
• The Frontier Justice is Crit boosted as long as the Engineer's Sentry Gun is actively targeting the boss.
• The Rescue Ranger and Pomson 6000 are Crit boosted.
• All pistols are Crit boosted.
• The Short Circuit may or may not be replaced with a Pistol, depending onserver configuration.
• The Eureka Effect may or may not be replaced with a Wrench, depending onserver configuration.
• Telefragging the boss will deal exactly 9001 damage.

Medic

• The Medic spawns with 40% ÜberCharge, and after each ÜberCharge runs out, gains 31% Übercharge automatically.
• Targets who have been granted a Crit boost by the gamemode will also deal Mini-crit damage for indirect forms of damage if they are being healed. This can affect an Engineer's sentry by giving it Mini-crits when an Engineer has his Wrench equipped, because the game mode normally only grants Crits without Mini-crits for melee weapons.
• All syringe guns are replaced with a custom Syringe Gun that grants +5% Übercharge on hit and the Overdose's speed effect.
• The Crusader's Crossbow is Crit boosted, deals 45% extra damage, and gains +15% ÜberCharge on each successful hit.
• All Mediguns are replaced with a customized Kritzkrieg that grants both Crits and invulnerability during its ÜberCharge and the Disciplinary Action speed boost effect while healing the Scout. Upon activating ÜberCharge, the Medic is boosted to start at 150% instead of 100% charge, causing it to last for 12 seconds rather than 8.

Sniper

• All Sniper rifles deal 3x more damage than normal. Critical and Mini-crit hits will still deal the same amount of damage as though they were not Crit or Mini-crit hits.
• The Sniper Rifle outlines the boss (like Payload Cart or CTF Intelligence) for several seconds. The time added to the glow timer scales based on the charge of the shot.
• The Huntsman and the Fortified Compound are granted +100% reserve ammo and deal 50% extra damage. They are also Crit boosted.
• The Sydney Sleeper will not apply Jarate to bosses but contributes half as much rage to the boss than other Sniper rifles.
• The Bazaar Bargain is not allowed and is replaced with the Sniper Rifle.
• The Hitman's Heatmaker gains Focus on hit. The amount of Focus gained varies by the charge of the shot.
• The SMG is Crit boosted.
• The Jarate and Self-Aware Beauty Mark removes 8% of the boss's rage, removes one arrow from the Christian Brutal Sniper if he has any, and reduces the duration of the Vagineer's uber.
• The Razorback is not allowed and is replaced with the SMG.
• The Cozy Camper, along with its attributes, also gives the player a custom SMG that causes the boss to bleed for 1.5 seconds on hit, deals 15% less damage, and does not randomly Crit. It is not granted a Crit boost.
• The Bushwacka will allow the Sniper to hit a wall to 'wall climb'. The attack rate of the Bushwacka is reduced on a successful 'wall climb' to lower the player's rate of ascension, each 'climb' also deals around 15 damage to the player to prevent indefinite climbing. The Bushwacka prevents the player from being healed while in use, to further prevent Medics from allowing a Sniper to indefinitely climb.

Spy

• A backstab from any Spy knife deals massive damage to the boss, from roughly 60% of the boss's max health at lower player counts to 10% on nearly full servers.
• Upon a successful backstab, both the Spy and the boss are alerted, and the Razorback effect is applied to the Spy, disabling further attacks and cloaking for 2 seconds.
• Being cloaked next to a Dispenser rapidly depletes the Cloak meter to prevent camping.
• Rage stun will still affect cloaked Spies, and show "spooked" ghost particle effects above the Spy's head.
• All Spy revolvers gain a Mini-crit boost while the Spy is undisguised.
• The Ambassador does 2.5x (255) damage on headshots.
• The Diamondback grants 2 Revenge Crits on backstab. Each Crit deals 200 damage to the boss.
• Your Eternal Reward and Wanga Prick only disables Disguise Kit and has a lower decloak sound volume.
• The Conniver's Kunai will start the player off with 65 health instead of 70. A successful backstab adds 180 health to the Spy, and can overheal up to 270 health.
• A successful backstab with the Big Earner grants 100% Cloak meter and a 3 seconds speed boost.
• The Invis Watch, Enthusiast's Timepiece and Quäckenbirdt will grant a 90% damage reduction while cloaked. However, it grants only about 42% resistance against bosses' attacks which allows them to deal 85 damage to a cloaked Spy.
• The Cloak and Dagger is not allowed and is replaced with the Invis Watch or Enthusiast's Timepiece.
• The Dead Ringer grants a constant 90% damage reduction. Unlike the other watches, the boss will only deal 62 damage to a Spy that has the Dead Ringer active, feigned or not.

Source