NS2 damage in detail
Nintendows
Join Date: 2016-11-07 Member: 223716Members, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2016-11-07 Member: 223716Members, Squad Five Blue
The current damage model was very confusing for me and everywhere I read about it was wrong or missing huge parts of the logic, so I decided to read the lua code behind it. Below are the results of delving into the depths. It's not super straightforward for me so I apologize in advance if I'm missing something or mis-reading it.
Damage is first multiplied based on the source and receiver:
Damage is first multiplied based on the source and receiver:
- Flamethrower does 2.5 times to flammable things
- Flamethrower does 1.125 times damage to structures
- Grenade launcher does 0.8 times damage to players
- Corrosion is really weird since it only does damage to armor and structure health. Marines take 12% damage, exos take 40% damage and structures take 100%.
- Nanoshield multiplies damage by 0.68
- Lerk Umbra multiplies damage by 0.75 against shotguns, bullets (?), miniguns and railguns.
- Focus adds 16.6% damage per veil if you are using the following abilities: Bite, Spit, LerkBite, Swipe, Stab, Gore. There are exceptions in the code, but they all lead to the same number, as far as I can tell.
- If you are damaging a structure or exo, crush applies to all damage. The source gets an additional 7% damage per shell.
- If a Gorge, not dealing damage with DotMarker, Babbler, Hydra, or anything "biological" (?)
- If an Onos, not dealing damage with Stomp
- If a skulk, not dealing damage with parasite or xenocide
If you met the criteria, the following applies - Lifesteal amount is set for any damage you deal based on life form:
- Skulk gets 14
- Gorge gets 15
- Fade gets 20
- Onos gets 40
- If you are a lerk, you get 0 lifesteal unless using Spike or Bite abilities: 2 for spiking, 10 for biting.
- This lifesteal is then multiplied by 0.333 for each veil, so the number remains the same at 3 Veils.
- Lifesteal only heals you for health, not armor.
- Armor fraction starts at 70%, but is increased by crush at this point if the reciever isn't an exo or structure. The source gets an additional 7% armor fraction per shell. So with 3 shells, you deal 91% armor damage, 9% health damage.
- Armor is reduced by damage based on damage type. Damage types are:
- Normal: 2 damage = 1 armor
- Heavy: 1 damage = 1 armor
- Light: 4 damage = 1 armor
- Structures take a different amount of damage to health compared to armor but I can't quite figure out what that is
- Babblers cannot take more than 5 damage from anything
- Gas and poison only deal damage to breathing targets and only to health
- Nerve Gas only damages aliens and their armor but still has some reductions
- Poison can't reduce lower than 5
- Friendlies cannot damage each other, with the exception of self-damage from grenades and splash damage from ARcs.
Comments
https://wiki.naturalselection2.com/view/Damage_Types#List_of_Damage_Types
Normal damage is 1=1 for health, 2=1 for armor.
Normal damage does 40% damage to health, 70% to armor
Skulk bite does 75 base normal damage.
Rines start with 100H 30A.
So base skulk bite vs base marine does 30 damage to health, 52.5 to armor. Armor absorbs half of normal damage, so armor is subtracted by 26.25. So a rine after one bite is left with 70H, 3.75A.
Next bite, that 3.75 armor absorbs it's worth of damage. Since armor absorbs half normal damage, 3.75 armor absorbs 7.5 of 75 bite damage. 67.5 bite damage is directed to health. Rine is left with 2.5 health.
Is this all correct?
And there are no digits behind the dot - I assume.. soundsmore like 2/3 damage to armor
70%+40%=110%
1 skulks bite does 52.5 armor damage, 22.5 health damage. Armor reduced by 26.25, health by 22.5, left with 3.75 armor, 77.5 health. Next bite, armor absorbs 7.5 total damage. 67.5 damage done to health. 77.5-67.5=10 health.
Eureka!
It doesn't do that against anything else. It increases your damage against Exos and structures by 21%.
Killing marines armor faster is an upgrade, not a downgrade.
To be clear: Biting an armour 3 marine as a skulk with crush leaves the marine with 93 health and 55 armour, but without crush leaves them with 77 health and 63 armour. You're free to think of that as whatever you want, but I see that as a downgrade.
So in order to kill a marine which gets medpacks he first needs to get on low armor before he is going to be killed..
If the marines have armor 3 and your a fade you would learn to appreciate marines with full hp and low armor
* Without=100 * With=121
That's a significant amount of extra damage. Vs A1 exos, that's three hits instead of four. Vs A2 it's four hits for both, but crush leaves the exo with seven health after the third hit. At A3, it's 5 hits without crush, 4 with.
Of course gameplay doesn't happen in a vacuum like my example, but I think it illustrates the point that crush can definitely make a big difference.
Since the obverse effect would be so obviously an upgrade it's hard to consider the way it is now as an advantage. The opposite effect being reducing the armor ratio by 7% per level, so at max crush you'd deal 49% armor and 51% health. That would mean a 75 damage skulk would always kill a 100 hp soldier in no more than 3 bites.
Sadly we don't have a lot of insight into the damage system in NS2 or why it was designed this way. I can only find high-level design docs from years ago.
Medpacks. You're version of crush would make medpacks work much better. Current crush makes medpacks less effective.
Med packs certainly do make marine health almost unimportant, since you can regenerate it all in under a second.
At the expense of tres, though.
Over medding is a thing.
I agree. But even spending 12 res to save an extractor is worth it.
And here I thought you should never recycle RTs.
Under a second is a large window of time in melee range combat..