So, after attempting to do One Man Army Extended with a wide variety of actors, I've basically found that its impossible to do without holing up inside a cave and shooting at anyone that comes in (but then of course if anyone gets within a few yards of you with a digger you're also screwed...)

The reason this happens is because dropship gibs are just TOO GOOD at killing people. In one game in particular, I had a terminator on top of a hill with a sniper rifle and was killing any dropships or actors I saw, and with a few close calls of rogue engines smashing into my hill, I was able to stay alive. Until, that is, out of nowhere a small, brick sized grey gib fell out of the sky a few feet above my head and instantly killed my terminator. It just fell straight THROUGH him and obliterated everything it touched on its way to the ground, where it rested harmlessly in a pool of blood.

I don't recall spare gibs being THIS annoying in previous builds. There was always a chance that a dropship you shot down would fall and crush you, but never anything on this level of random death. Is it new for Build 26? Is it being fixed in Build 27?

I know dropship doors used to do similar things. Having an uncanny ability to almost ALWAYS hit the actor you were messing around with.

You need a roof.

That's because One Man Army is fundamentally not the point of CC. CC is (allegedly) first and foremost a strategy game. Your units will die, and die frequently, and die hilariously. That has always been the case.

It might be nice if someone were to make a script that set all gibs HitsMOs to 0 just for OMA, but you have to understand that actors being killed randomly is an essential part of CC.

Nah, they're just the right amount of OP.

Well, it does make sense. If a chunk of metal came rocketing out of a recently exploded spaceship and hit your head, chances are your head isn't gunna be doing much other than collapsing and dying.

Except the metagame has mostly been to have a single well equipped actor as opposed to many moderately equipped ones, (This may change with B27, haven't tried skirmishes yet) and its not that dropships killed me, that's fine, being crushed under a massive slab of metal and rocket fuel makes sense to die. But that isn't what happens.

A small, maybe 5 pixel wide grey gib landed on my heavily armored unit's head and crushed him into itty bitty little pieces. This actor can survive a missile to the head, yet he can't live through a brick?

The balancing of random pieces of metal vs. actual guns really needs to be looked at.

Here's where this makes no sense: The actor I'm using can survive explosions and weaponry that demolish bunkers and terrai, yet the brick kills him but harmlessly rests on the top of terrain.

If said actor is wearing a helmet, that would be the cause of the head 'splosions.
The object hits the helmet, which then attempts to move the head, but just squashes it.
I had this problem with the armoured enforcer back in the Red Legion.

So, wearing a helmet makes things falling on your head MORE lethal, not less.

That makes zero sense, is there a fix for it.

Err... I think you just have to make sure that the GibImpulseLimit of the helmet is less than that of the head,
and you have to set the JointStifness of the helmet to zero, this helps but doesn't fix all of it.
I think...

Well, it doesn't make things more lethal, just only slightly less lethal. In terms of physics, it makes perfect sense - all a helmet really does is prevent penetration, and also hopefully deflect falling objects slightly. Armour isn't some magic type of object that suddenly makes you invincible, you know.

The issue is that the armor these actors are wearing is strong enough to completely absorb and break missiles and heavy artillery, but a brick destroys it.

Its an issue of comparison, not of whether or not gibs should kill in the first place.

Typically helmets do have a level of padding to dissipate impact force, though.

If they only did as you say and "prevent penetration and deflect objects slightly" then there would be no point in wearing a bicycle helmet or a construction helmet.

@Maverik: The keyword here is slightly. A construction or bicycle helmet are not gonna save you from a falling brick.
The neck would take the strain and probably compact, or snap completely.
"Prevent penetration and deflect objects slightly" is perfectly accurate.