Just wondering if anyone else have Dekker being cursed?
I just had him get headshoted 3 times in the same mission without ever taking any structure damage!
Have had 8 headshots happen to my crew so far and 7 of those where on Dekker.

For me, he does the most insta kills ;)

Sample bias. Also the way the AI works.

Dekker is your first (and for a while, only!) character with sensor lock, so he tends to get used as a scout and sent out front. Cue the AI taking potshots at him.

-> Once the AI manages to damage a mech, it for some reasons tends to gang up on it in an attempt to kill it. Cue lots of lasers, missiles and ACs being fired in Dekker's general direction, quite frequently while ignoring every other bloody mech on the field.

-> Headshots under these circumstances are merely a matter of statistics.

I suggest pulling your scout outside of LOS and if possible sensor range once the AI has taken a fancy to shooting him. This tends to redistribute the amount of incoming fire more favorable among those mechs that are left. With a bit of luck, mobility and a favorable map, you can rotate targeted mechs in and out. Or at least prevent your scout from getting gangbanged by whatever OpFor he or she just spotted.

His starting mech is garbage so replace it ASAP.

I got him in a firestarter pretty quick and he's awesome in that. Customize it and put on lots of armor, 6 machine guns, some ammo, and 4 jump jets.

He can take a lot of hits, and does huge close combat damage. If your other mechs can expose the structure then he can get in close and tear up their internals with the machine guns.

Melee attack activates all your close combat weapons as well, so go ahead and punch everything to death with this setup. It's awesome. He gets more finishing kills with his firestarter than any of my other mechs.

He can also dual-purpose as a scout and sensor lock mechs for your LRM user.

The funny thing is I quickly swapped to a sturdier mech due to not really using much scouting.
He rarely fires but instead use sensor look either for out of sight targets but mostly to remove evasion from a kill target.
And having two bulwark pilots they are always in front taking most of the hits.
Dekker only really get hit by lrms when flanked and have never taken structure damage after switching out the first light mech.
Atm have a shadowhawk for him though he rarely is in it due to being in medbay all the time, 45 days on the 3 headhit mission and I had a bonus to medbay due to an event at that time. Also his replacement during wounded time have never taken a headhit but have allot more combat time. Dekker is pretty close to be tossed out the airlock due to being behind in levels right now. :)

Current comp is 2 centurions and 2 shadow hawks until the newly built quickdraw is fit for combat.
Did run one centurion as a lrm battery for awhile but recently switched it out into a single ac20 which have worked out way better than expected. Don't need to peel of much armor even on a heavy mech before one single hit to ct will take it out.

RNGesus in this game is a biased bitch. 60+ weeks and only a few headshots from my pilots even with a localized shot mastery and a missile boat raining doom over the enemy mechs.

But I take a headshot every two missions, with spikes of FOUR headshots in a mission like yesterday. A lance of one light, two mediums and a heavy, not a lot of weapons, not a lot of shots. Just a LOT of luck... or a RNG a bit biased.

Yeah my pilots fail to get lucky as well but taking the legs out still give me more than enough mech parts.
Funny enough last night I had a mission with friendly turrets and 4 turrets in a row scored head hit on 4 different enemy mechs in the same turn! No kills from it but it sure did make the mission quite a bit easier.

Just do everything in your power to get some cockpit mods. Those take almost all the nonsense out of the RNG. Called shots do the rest. Once you can safely ignore an injury (or if you're lucky, 2-3) per fight, those headshots become much, much less bothersome.

Cockpit mods are never common, but you can sometimes buy them on worlds with Rich, Manufacturing, Black Market, or Battlefield features.

Dekker does fine by me. But that`s what I like about thegame, it has a certain amount of randomness to it. In fact, in my first battle with them, it was Glitch that was head shotted and killed to my surprise.

Actually My Dekker died during the Metals Mission, head shot within 1 min of game start. I don't miss him. On a good note Glitch loves head shotting others.

Behemoth is the one that takes all the head hits (and who, unsurprisingly, died to a PPC to the head on the ammo mission from the seventh mech). When you designate a character as the Bulwark damage sponge, they tend to get shot at, and probability means that they're going to take shots to the head.

Meanwhile, Decker uses sensor lock to scout enemy mechs or drain evasion while staying far off to the side of the battle. If he is going to get LOS or engage in combat, it's during the Assault phase when the other mechs have already moved and jumping to get 5-6 evasion. Next turn, after ducking a shot by a light mechs (which missed, because +5-6 evasion) jump back out at first opportunity and use sensor lock again. It's essentialy what vonHardenberg suggested, but with a more conservative approach - Rather than pulling out when he gets shot at, it's better to not let him get shot at all. Just using a Wolverine-R to finish off arms, torsos, or add the last bar to stability damage can sometimes do more to affect the battle than blasting away with another heavy or assault.

For fun here are some stats.

Behemoth bulwark : 44 deployments, 21 Injuries, 2 non headshot injuries(one knockdown and one side torso lost)
Glitch gunnery/piloting : 51 deployments, 6 injuries, all headshots.
Dekker scout : 12 deployments, 7 injuries, 3 headshots in a single mission.
Hambone second scout : 39 deployments, 2 injuries, all headshots.
Hemlock bulwark : 16 deployments, 9 injuries, all headshots.
Medusa scout : 8 deployments, 0 injuries! Clearly I should play him more!
Recoil bulwark : 4 deployments, 5 injuries, one injury from knockdown.
Main 20AC bulwark : 53 missions, 13 injuries, all headshots. This mech have easily taken half of all attacks.

Then I have 8 more mechwarriors whom have just filled a mission here or there and not really have much data.
Like 1-2 missions with 0-2 headshots.
Sure I got two with worse stats than Dekker but they are front line tanks who are there to soak hits.
Compare Dekker with Hambone or Medusa and things look rather insane.
And of course my PC who's pretty much been within melee range 90% of the game due to using a single AC20.
Also I learnt that any cockpit mod did not protect against headshots yesterday, my PC took a hit and after the same mission looted a proper injury resist.

There's no rhyme or reason. I had a critically damaged Locust run up and melee my Battlemaster. Head hit. Figure that one out.

And yeah I always go for the high ground when possible. High ground is the main factor I look for when deciding from which angle an objective will be approached.

I think I actually take the most head shots from medium lasers on enemy scouts.
Feel like there is a way lower chance for AI heavy weapons to hit head as I have never had that happen to me.