Originally posted by transio

Or am I missing something?
Could be...

I'm no expert but it seems like all that load/vector/cosine stuff is for force transferred by solid rods, beams, etc.

The shock is not solid unless it's bottomed out, therefore the "load" experienced by the shock in most cases is limited to whatever damping force it's providing at the moment. The shock doesn't care if it's straight up or canted - all it cares about is squishing oil through that orifice. Thick oil and small opening at high speed? Lotsa damping going on. Shock feels high load. Old oil, thin and cut up from too many passes through the hole? Not much damping force there my friend. And of course no oil = no damping = no load. (other than friction)

I don't know if the VX shock's compression damping is position sensitive (fixed orifice, a nasty velocity squared situation) or is speed sensitive with shim stacks or something of that ilk - but either way you'll have to bust out a lot more complicated math to figure out the loads involved...