[SUGGESTION] Destroyable Health mode.

Hi i'd like to suggest that the healthpacks are destroyable by weapon fire.
That would prevent an enemy from running away and catching items during fight.
Additional one could make the item explode and make damage, that would it make a risk to camp near healthpacks during fight.
One could also make mega item spots react to shooting near it, for example if you shoot a weapon near a megahealth spot you'll get a lightning damage from the spot, that would penalize camping at megaspots.

Greetz
Magician

That's an interesting idea, though this would have a huge impact on the gameplay. I have a couple of other concerns, too:

I fear that exploding healthpacks would add yet another source of splash damage while there generally is a lot of splash damage already in Xonotic. Otherwise we might also trigger a chain reaction when hitting the first of a chain of 5h packs... 

If one could make health/armor packs silently disappear by shooting them, it would be quite confusing if that wouldn't work for other items (weapons, ammo, powerups) as well. So we would have to make them "shootable" as well, I suppose?

With the splashy weaponset of Xonotic I think it would only make sense if you need direct hits for making them disappear, and there should be a certain damage that they can take so they don't disappear when simply laser jumping on them. Then again we'd need to think about whether we require some sort of feedback about how much damage an item already has taken, and does it regenerate?

The items have different sizes, would that be taken into account for hitboxes? How would different hitboxes go with "simple items" setting? 

One would have to implement this as a mod - if technically possible at all.

I don't think there's anything wrong in being able to pull off an escape (+outmaneuvering an opponent, gives people incentive to learn to go fast beyond holding forward+jump) and take tactical advantages of respawning pickup items (as opposed to aimless roaming).

But having the pick up items be explosive barrels, is a lot like asking for double damage when you can already punish predictable behavior; Mega Health adds 100 health- 1 weapon combo already eliminates that and does a bit more damage.

Maybe try this for megas only? Health packs are crucially important in duels for the down-players to resupply. If the player in control can just roll through the map while destroying all the health and armor then there is almost no chance for the down player. 

IMO punishing predictable behavior (spamming health packs after you've dealt them a lot of damage) works just fine as-is.

That would prevent an enemy from running away and catching items during fight.

It would also prevent you healing up after said encouter with the enemy, why not just shoot the enemy instead of the health bubbles? Running away in Xonotic is an essential strategy, because if you die you'll lose all your weapons and armor - after which you have to run around the map and pick them up again. It also puts you into a bad situation, because your enemy will most likely have those weapons. Learn to move fast and how to recycle resources. Combat skills and accuracy don't get you far in this game.

If the player in control can just roll through the map while destroying all the health and armor then there is almost no chance for the down player.

Well its similar to InstaGib then but not quite as harsh, because the shot player still has a chance and you can use different weapons than just the sniper. ^^

Can be a mod, why not. I remember there was a mod like this on UT99, destroyable + exploding items. Well it was fine and fun to play once in a lan party but that was it. As we tested all kinds of strange stuff in our lanparties back in the days

I think this does not contribute anything for the vanilla game settings, though especially for the competitive settings, but I guess this was not posted for that stuff in mind

What if we turn this into a powerup, so for 30 sec one player can make items explode by shooting them. Once it's limited we can make it much stronger and fun to use. In fact it could be stronger than strength because it's much more situational. I would change items explosion radius and damage based on items value and let items explode other items making chain reactions, especially with rows of armour shards and small hp "cans" it could be a blast to use.

We can still argue why it'd be a pointless mod though. Let me elaborate on "why not just shoot the enemy instead".
Would the destructible armor/hp have the same hit value as they would have when wielded by the player? If it had the same value, then why not just shoot the enemy indeed? If it has less value, like lets say you can destroy it with one blaster instead - won't it then be more easier to starve your in-control opponent out of resources that way? If you can take your opponent's stack away faster by just destroying the items, then wont it become an essential tactic then? I mean if you're too far away from an item to get and your opponent is just about to grab it, should this feature exist to favor the slower person? If however the destructible hp/armor items had a more reasonable durability, like maybe 50 dmg = 2-5 blasters depending on how spot on you hit them. Then why wouldn't you then rather use that effort to disturb your opponent's heading towards that item and maybe as a result get it to yourself?
Even if it were just a powerup like Morhped suggested, why would you aim to destroy the item rather than simply deny it or get it yourself? I think it'd be a little too situational and I don't see how this would favor people who are in control of the map.

If the player in control can just roll through the map while destroying all the health and armor then there is almost no chance for the down player.

Well its similar to InstaGib then but not quite as harsh, because the shot player still has a chance and you can use different weapons than just the sniper. ^^

Instagib has its own leniences in that no matter how much health and armor your opponent has, s/he'll die in one hit. Even if the mutator focuses on being right on the mark asap, no spread, no splash, the Vaporizer has a very low refire time (retries more permissible compared to other weapons). You also don't need to be as conscious of the map in instagib, because there's no health and armor to track respawn times of either.

Both players are going to be shot. One of them has the advantage of a larger health and armor pool, and the other doesn't.
Comparatively, between with and without the destroyable items, the disadvantaged player is going to have less of a chance than s/he has already without.

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As a mod for FFA, I guess anything goes?
It's already janky in a design sense when more players than intended are crammed into a map on average.

Both players are going to be shot. One of them has the advantage of a larger health and armor pool, and the other doesn't.
Comparatively, between with and without the destroyable items, the disadvantaged player is going to have less of a chance than s/he has already without.

Then what about a mutator to disable health over 100% or disable mega items or items at all, does that alreadxy exist?

Not everything needs to be a mutator. Search cvars using `apropos` or `search` in console - e.g. `apropos health`. There are limits for everything.