Changing the Damage Formula (aka, not this shit again...)

[JimTheDinosaur]

I've finally decided to try and take a stab at doing the damage calculations through the hs_combatdamage hook script, and I felt that glorious occasion deserved its own thread. Especially because changing the damage formula is something that has already been done a lot of times before. But, hey, that's good, standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

My approach has two basic intentions: (1) incorporate all the best parts of other formula's into the new one, and (2) arrogantly try to improve on them.

Part One: Amalgamating the Good Stuff

I've been looking through a lot of threads, and while I undoubtedly missed a lot of good ideas/implementations, this is what I want to incorporate in general:

(1) From YAAM: AP ammo doesn't just affect DR, but DT as well.

(2) From Glovz's fix: The DR/DT combo of armor needs to be less punishing.

(3) From Cubik's fomula: the DT-mod should apply before the Critical multiplier kicks in, not after (because criticals only make sense as attacks that hit vital organs etc.; can't hit these if the armor stops the bullet, now can you?).

(4) From Magnus (not sure if he implemented it though): Normal throwing damage should be strength dependent.


Part Two: "Improving" the Amalgamation

One of the biggest changes I'm planning on is the way DT/DR works. The theory behind the two values of course is that DT simulates that sturdy armor stop lesser damage from getting through, while DR reduces damage that is strong enough to punch through, right? Now, this is pretty solid, but the problem (in my opinion) is in the way they are combined:

If a bullet punches through Advanced Power Armor (i.e. deals at least 19 damage), why is this damage further reduced by another 60%? After all, the damage is already reduced by a huge percentage by the DT, what explains the second damage reduction? I've read some silly rationalization about "multiple layers" of each type of armor, with DT representing the outer one, and DR the one below that, but that's of course silly (after all, even if it has multiple layers, why would one have an absolute damage reduction and the other a relative one?). It is clear that the devs (rightly) wanted both an absolute and a relative damage mod, but the reason for combining them simply escapes me.

So, the alternative I'm thinking of is this: DT does what it says it does: it's a threshold; but once this threshold gets passed, it stops playing a role and the DR kicks in to decide how much damage has been reduced by the armor. The result would be that a round dealing 18 damage against APA still does 0 damage (doesn't pass the DT), 19 damage on the other hand does (19*0.4=8) damage, instead of 1 in the old system. Some of you might disagree with this, but to me it makes sense that a round which punches through armor does at least some damage, simple as that.

This would also mean that I would change YAAM's approach of having AP ammo consecutively reduce DT and then (when the DT is "gone") lower the DR, into something which reduces both DT and DR (e.g. 10mm AP could reduce DT by 2 and DR by 20).

The second big change I'm thinking of would involve scrapping the base critical hit modifiers for different body parts (like I already alluded to in a thread in General Fallout Discussion). But I'm not a hundred percent sure how I would design this precisely.

Edit: I'll also just list some of the minor changes I'm planning on, and which I haven't seen mentioned yet:

- Lessen burst rounds of burst only weapons and raise their damage. At the moment the minigun is useful after you encounter it for approximately 5 minutes, because it can't deal with armor due to its ridiculously low damage rating (much less even than the Assault Rifle which uses the same ammo).

- make Living Anatomy affect the critical hit chance on precision hits, not base damage (why the hell would my knowledge of anatomy cause me to deal extra damage with a random hit on a bystander's shoulder?).

What do you all think about these changes?

 

[Glovz]

I think these changes are promising, but it will expose the balance issues between ammo/weapons and armor immediately.

... 19 damage on the other hand does (19*0.4=8) damage ...

I do disagree somewhat with the above. Given that if the damage role exceeds the threshold by one, this should mean the energy of the hit has been greatly dissipated.

Where your example appears to disregard that the threshold does anything at all once it is exceeded.

I'm not sure how to get around this problem without changing the nature of DT, because it should have a significant impact on the damage value before DR is applied.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

... 19 damage on the other hand does (19*0.4=8) damage ...

I do disagree somewhat with the above. Given that if the damage role exceeds the threshold by one, this should mean the energy of the hit has been greatly dissipated.

Where your example appears to disregard that the threshold does anything at all once it is exceeded.

I still think that the preferable solution here would be to raise the DR, rather than keeping the DT/DR combo in the damage reduction calculation. After all, is there any conceivable reason why a 23 damage hit should do 4 times the damage that a 19 damage hit does (i.e. 4 instead of 1)? I simply believe that absolute values have no part to play in damage reduction: an attack that is 10% more forceful should do 10% more damage if both attacks pierce the armor.

Edit: Hmmm.. now I'm starting to doubt myself a bit. I don't know enough about ballistics (or anything about ballistics) to know whether this is actually the case.

 

[Glovz]

... an attack that is 10% more forceful should do 10% more damage if both attacks pierce the armor.

I see your point here. So DT is purely a barrier to surpass, while DR is what actually reduces the damage.

I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it's starting to make a lot more sense the more I think about it.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

... an attack that is 10% more forceful should do 10% more damage if both attacks pierce the armor.

I see your point here. So DT is purely a barrier to surpass, while DR is what actually reduces the damage.

I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it's starting to make a lot more sense the more I think about it.

Hehe, just at the same time as it's making less sense to me (see my edit).

 

[Glovz]

@Jim
Well, taking into account your other changes, it should theoretically balance out.

However, late game combat will be faster when the player has high skill for aimed shots, gets criticals, and with the npc fixed hp.

This isn't necessary a bad thing.

Just rereading the first post, were you saying that a non-aimed shot would have no possibility of a critical hit? I can see reducing the chance but not eliminating it entirely.

 

[Cubik2k]

@Jim

Look at this mini damage mod based on hs_combatdamage hook script.

http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Cubik/FO2_Combat_Tweaks_Mod

I made this years ago and forgot how it works, but you can analyze sources.

In short:
- AP/JHP/FMJ etc. damage is based on chance to penetrate of armor + modifiers of ammo,
- swing/thrust melee modes have some advantages.
-shotguns has bonus,

Probably mod is e little bugged: burst is not calculated properly, you can easly check it

enjoy

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

@Jim
Well, taking into account your other changes, it should theoretically balance out.

Nah, I realize now that I made a big mistake thinking about this issue. The original system makes perfect sense actually. DT represents armor lowering the absolute amount of momentum of the attack, while DR represents the fact that the damage caused by an attack doesn't drop in a linear way as the momentum decreases, but exponentially (a punch with twice as much velocity does more than twice the amount of damage).

I was just trying to find a solution to the potential problem of less armor bypassing criticals = overpowered armor. Maybe I'll just change the protos by the time I eventually get around to balancing this huge pile of changes I'm making.

Just rereading the first post, were you saying that a non-aimed shot would have no possibility of a critical hit? I can see reducing the chance but not eliminating it entirely.

No no no, this applies exclusively to the Living Anatomy perk. I was referring to a change I've already made in the critical hit chance system, where for some reason the critical hit chance was influenced by chance to hit, but which I've made exclusively Luck based. When I did that I did it with the idea that it would be silly for someone to be able to "aim" for a critical hit (the overtly weak spots, like the eyes or groin, he can already aim for seperately). I then said that it would only make sense to be able to aim for critical hit "locations" if you had the appropriate anatomical knowledge, which Living Anatomy provides. So the idea would be that if you combine the knowledge of LA with the skill needed to actually aim for those spots, then the critical hit chance will slowly rise.

@Jim

Look at this mini damage mod based on hs_combatdamage hook script.

http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Cubik/FO2_Combat_Tweaks_Mod

I made this years ago and forgot how it works, but you can analyze sources.

In short:
- AP/JHP/FMJ etc. damage is based on chance to penetrate of armor + modifiers of ammo,
- swing/thrust melee modes have some advantages.
-shotguns has bonus,

Probably mod is e little bugged: burst is not calculated properly, you can easly check it

enjoy

Cool, didn't know you had actually used hs_combatdamage, will check it out! Edit: Do you remember what was wrong in general with the burst calculation?


EDIT: I'm also starting to get second thoughts about removing the location based critical hit chances. If a critical hit is the striking of a vital organ/particular weak spot which greatly damages the opponent, then it would make total sense that places like the head, groin and eyes would yield relatively large critical hit chances. The fact that a head shot still has a 50% chance of having the same damage as, say, a shot to the shoulder, can be explained as this shot striking the lower part of the head.

The exception would be the limbs, which have a larger crit chance than the torso, but which have less vital organs/weak spots, but I only just noticed that this is already taken account by the limbs having lower critical multipliers than the torso.

It looks like I'll probably restrict myself to smaller changes and just putting together all the good stuff from the other formulas.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Well, I've been doing some testing and I've found out that with bursts it isn't the case that hs_combatdamage gets run multiple times and hs_itemdamage once, but the other way round. What confuses me even more is that hs_itemdamage gets called multiple times before the single instance of combatdamage, so I'm assuming the game finds out about armor and the like in the case of bursts somewhere else than through combatdamage?

Anyway, I've been thinking things through, and I've come up with a formula that I think works. For reference, here's a comparison of the original formula, YAAM's formula and Glovz's formula:

ND = net damage value
RD = random damage value produced from weapons hit damage range
RB = ranged bonus (RB=0 unless the player has Bonus Ranged Damage perk)
CM = critical hit damage multiplier (if no critical hit then CM=2, otherwise assigned value from critical hit table)
ADR = armor damage resistance value
ADT = armor damage threshold value
X = ammo dividend
Y = ammo divisor
RM = ammo resistance modifier (only value allowed to be negative or positive in the equation)
CD = combat difficulty multiplier (Easy=75, Normal=100, Hard=125)

Original:
ND = (((RD+RB)*(X*CM)/Y/2*CD/100)-ADT)*((100-(ADR+RM))/100)

Glovz:
ND = ((RD+RB-(ADT+(ADT*(ADR+RM)/100*X/Y))+X)*CM/2*CD/100)

YAAM:
ND = ((RD-(ADT-RM))*(X*CM)/(Y*2*100))*((ADR-surplusRM)/100)
note: RM is initially a DT modifier, and when all DT is spent, it becomes a DR modifier (*10).

The formula I'm thinking of right now would be almost the same as YAAM's, but with two differences:

ND = ((RD-(ADT-RM))*((ADR-surplusRM)/100))*(X*CM)/(Y*100)

As you can see, the first change would be that not only the DT penalty, but also the DR penalty come before the damage multipliers. The reason for this is because I think I've finally understood the DT/DR combination's rationale (at least in the case of bullets): the DT represents the absolute reduction in the projectile's velocity, while the DR represent the additional relative decrease of the damage due to the projectile fragmenting/deforming (so not, as I said earlier, due to a bullet that's twice as slow doing less than half the damage; this is nonsense and if anything it's the other way around). So, if I'm right that this is the case, then it makes sense that a round which has been fragmented/deformed by armor does less potential damage, even when hitting a weak spot with a critical, than a round which hasn't.

The second change I'm not yet sure about, but I'm leaning towards unnerfing critical hits. If I'm right, then right now a critical modifier of *4 actually does *2 damage because regular hits already have a critical modifier of *2 built in. I'm leaning towards scrapping this because I have the feeling that this nerfing was motivated by you becoming an eye-critting monster towards the end-game, and given that this wouldn't be the case anymore with my changes, it might make sense to unnerf, but I'm not totally sure.

I have a couple of other changes concerning criticals in mind:

-Uncoupling armor bypassing from criticals. Why would almost every instance of you striking armor in a weak spot result in you doing more damage than if he hadn't been wearing armor at all? This system leads to the weird situation that it implies that all of an armor's weak spots cover vital organs and the like, which wouldn't be very good armor design. I would like to simply have armor bypassing a random feature (with varying degrees of effectiveness, e.g. 1/5 to 4/5 DT/DR decrease), governed only by how well the armor is maintained (so I'd switch the existing passive armor repair system, which I'm not a huge fan of, for this).

-Uncoupling melee/unarmed knockdowns from criticals. You shouldn't knock someone down (with them losing AP) just because you hit a weak spot, but because you're (significantly) stronger than him. I think also that in general melee/unarmed damage needs a different formula than the one for projectiles (for instance, a knife doesn't deform/fragment when striking armor), but I'm not sure yet how exactly.

 

[Glovz]

Well, I've been doing some testing and I've found out that with bursts it isn't the case that hs_combatdamage gets run multiple times and hs_itemdamage once, but the other way round. What confuses me even more is that hs_itemdamage gets called multiple times before the single instance of combatdamage, so I'm assuming the game finds out about armor and the like in the case of bursts somewhere else than through combatdamage?

Anyway, I've been thinking things through, and I've come up with a formula that I think works. For reference, here's a comparison of the original formula, YAAM's formula and Glovz's formula:

ND = net damage value
RD = random damage value produced from weapons hit damage range
RB = ranged bonus (RB=0 unless the player has Bonus Ranged Damage perk)
CM = critical hit damage multiplier (if no critical hit then CM=2, otherwise assigned value from critical hit table)
ADR = armor damage resistance value
ADT = armor damage threshold value
X = ammo dividend
Y = ammo divisor
RM = ammo resistance modifier (only value allowed to be negative or positive in the equation)
CD = combat difficulty multiplier (Easy=75, Normal=100, Hard=125)

Original:
ND = (((RD+RB)*(X*CM)/Y/2*CD/100)-ADT)*((100-(ADR+RM))/100)

Glovz:
ND = ((RD+RB-(ADT+(ADT*(ADR+RM)/100*X/Y))+X)*CM/2*CD/100)

YAAM:
ND = ((RD-(ADT-RM))*(X*CM)/(Y*2*100))*((ADR-surplusRM)/100)
note: RM is initially a DT modifier, and when all DT is spent, it becomes a DR modifier (*10).

The formula I'm thinking of right now would be almost the same as YAAM's, but with two differences:

ND = ((RD-(ADT-RM))*((ADR-surplusRM)/100))*(X*CM)/(Y*100)

As you can see, the first change would be that not only the DT penalty, but also the DR penalty come before the damage multipliers. The reason for this is because I think I've finally understood the DT/DR combination's rationale (at least in the case of bullets): the DT represents the absolute reduction in the projectile's velocity, while the DR represent the additional relative decrease of the damage due to the projectile fragmenting/deforming (so not, as I said earlier, due to a bullet that's twice as slow doing less than half the damage; this is nonsense and if anything it's the other way around). So, if I'm right that this is the case, then it makes sense that a round which has been fragmented/deformed by armor does less potential damage, even when hitting a weak spot with a critical, than a round which hasn't.

The second change I'm not yet sure about, but I'm leaning towards unnerfing critical hits. If I'm right, then right now a critical modifier of *4 actually does *2 damage because regular hits already have a critical modifier of *2 built in. I'm leaning towards scrapping this because I have the feeling that this nerfing was motivated by you becoming an eye-critting monster towards the end-game, and given that this wouldn't be the case anymore with my changes, it might make sense to unnerf, but I'm not totally sure.

I have a couple of other changes concerning criticals in mind:

-Uncoupling armor bypassing from criticals. Why would almost every instance of you striking armor in a weak spot result in you doing more damage than if he hadn't been wearing armor at all? This system leads to the weird situation that it implies that all of an armor's weak spots cover vital organs and the like, which wouldn't be very good armor design. I would like to simply have armor bypassing a random feature (with varying degrees of effectiveness, e.g. 1/5 to 4/5 DT/DR decrease), governed only by how well the armor is maintained (so I'd switch the existing passive armor repair system, which I'm not a huge fan of, for this).

-Uncoupling melee/unarmed knockdowns from criticals. You shouldn't knock someone down (with them losing AP) just because you hit a weak spot, but because you're (significantly) stronger than him. I think also that in general melee/unarmed damage needs a different formula than the one for projectiles (for instance, a knife doesn't deform/fragment when striking armor), but I'm not sure yet how exactly.

I need to find time to run the numbers myself, but any chance you can provide comparison damage results like I had in the past?

Removing halving of the critical multiplier will need to be tested extensively. Even with the high level understanding I have of the affects of your changes combined, this still feels like it may overpower criticals.

Armor repair necessity IMO is a shitty game mechanic, also you would need to tie that to the game economy. Damaged armor should not be worth as much. Your proposed passive armor repair seemed to be interesting, but again after thought it also would need to have affect on armor dollar value. Maybe I've misunderstood something in regards to this.

I disagree that melee/unarmed damage needs a different formula; unless you were thinking to modify weapon proto values such that they are drastically different?

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

I need to find time to run the numbers myself, but any chance you can provide comparison damage results like I had in the past?

Um, yeah, no need for that. In my overzealousness to think of a formula that was technically different from Haen's so that it wouldn't count as plagiarism, I made the wrong call of putting the damage resistance penalty before the damage threshold penalty. That would just insanely overpower armor and additionally make no sense. So I'll just leave it more or less the exact same as Haen's I think (so you should check his huge excel sheet for info on the values). I'll have to send Haen a pm asking if I can adapt his formula to the hook script, and hope he checks it sometimes .

Removing halving of the critical multiplier will need to be tested extensively. Even with the high level understanding I have of the affects of your changes combined, this still feels like it may overpower criticals.

Let's assume a medium hit of a turbo plasma rifle (50 damage) on APA, on the eyes, with the weakest critical hit. In the old system you'd have (50*2)-15)*0.4 = 34 damage. With my new system it'd be (50-15)*4*0.4= 56 damage. Of course, the chance to hit the eyes would be a lot lower; I just tested it out with 300% small arms skill and 14 hexes away from a tribal target with Narg and a hunting rifle, and I was at 62% to hit. Couple that with the new localization system and your talking 30% chance to hit the eyes and 25% chance to hit the head with that shot and you're talking a lot less criticals.

Though it's probably true that (especially with fixed HP) less but more punishing crits (not really true actually: see edit below) equals more frustration, so I could think along the lines of keeping the crits semi-nerfed (1.5* instead of 2*). So then with the above example you'd get (50-15)*3*0.4= 38 damage, more or less the same as the original. I would definitely avoid keeping the criticals at the same level as the original, because then they wouldn't just be much less frequent, but less powerful as well ((50-15)*2*0.4= 28, 6 less than the original).


EDIT: Forgot to mention that with armor bypassing decoupled from crits, the most punishing crits would become extremely rare (rather than the 30-80% depending on bodypart they are now), though eye shots is perhaps an unfortunate example because you'd want to keep that very bypass-prone. So, with the weakest bypass crit of the original with our example, you'd get (50*2)-3)*0.88 = 85 damage. Much higher than even our most unnerfed version of the critical.

Armor repair necessity IMO is a shitty game mechanic, also you would need to tie that to the game economy. Damaged armor should not be worth as much. Your proposed passive armor repair seemed to be interesting, but again after thought it also would need to have affect on armor dollar value. Maybe I've misunderstood something in regards to this. Sad

I think it's a shitty mechanic too (I assume we're talking about the same Arcanum-style annoyance here). That's why I like my passive repair scheme, because it (a) gives repair a bit of the status it in my opinion should have in a post-apoc setting, while (b) not forcing you to micromanage something which is really annoying to micromanage (see Arcanum). I just didn't like the way I had implemented it up to now because it suggested that your entire armor was x-percent more vulnerable, rather than spots which have fallen in disrepair (hence the attraction of the armor bypass thing).

The dollar value thing is a legitimate objection, and if you were to go that route you'd invite Arcanum-level horribleness all over again, but I'm not sure whether you're right. I mean, we're talking about improvizing repairs on a suit of armor in the middle of the wasteland here: this would make the armor more useful in battle, but it wouldn't make it more valuable (a cup with a hole in it which you've "repaired" with chewing gum works much better than it would without the "repairs", but it's worth the exact same thing).

I disagree that melee/unarmed damage needs a different formula; unless you were thinking to modify weapon proto values such that they are drastically different?

The direction I was thinking was to make melee/unarmed versus ranged opponents more about knocking down and disarming, and lowering the damage to compensate. I'm not sure whether this would be fun yet (or even whether the AI would be able to handle this properly). [/quote]

 

[Glovz]

I need to find time to run the numbers myself, but any chance you can provide comparison damage results like I had in the past?

Um, yeah, no need for that. In my overzealousness to think of a formula that was technically different from Haen's so that it wouldn't count as plagiarism, I made the wrong call of putting the damage resistance penalty before the damage threshold penalty. That would just insanely overpower armor and additionally make no sense. So I'll just leave it more or less the exact same as Haen's I think (so you should check his huge excel sheet for info on the values). I'll have to send Haen a pm asking if I can adapt his formula to the hook script, and hope he checks it sometimes .

Removing halving of the critical multiplier will need to be tested extensively. Even with the high level understanding I have of the affects of your changes combined, this still feels like it may overpower criticals.

Let's assume a medium hit of a turbo plasma rifle (50 damage) on APA, on the eyes, with the weakest critical hit. In the old system you'd have (50*2)-15)*0.4 = 34 damage. With my new system it'd be (50-15)*4*0.4= 56 damage. Of course, the chance to hit the eyes would be a lot lower; I just tested it out with 300% small arms skill and 14 hexes away from a tribal target with Narg and a hunting rifle, and I was at 62% to hit. Couple that with the new localization system and your talking 30% chance to hit the eyes and 25% chance to hit the head with that shot and you're talking a lot less criticals.

Though it's probably true that (especially with fixed HP) less but more punishing crits (not really true actually: see edit below) equals more frustration, so I could think along the lines of keeping the crits semi-nerfed (1.5* instead of 2*). So then with the above example you'd get (50-15)*3*0.4= 38 damage, more or less the same as the original. I would definitely avoid keeping the criticals at the same level as the original, because then they wouldn't just be much less frequent, but less powerful as well ((50-15)*2*0.4= 28, 6 less than the original).


EDIT: Forgot to mention that with armor bypassing decoupled from crits, the most punishing crits would become extremely rare (rather than the 30-80% depending on bodypart they are now), though eye shots is perhaps an unfortunate example because you'd want to keep that very bypass-prone. So, with the weakest bypass crit of the original with our example, you'd get (50*2)-3)*0.88 = 85 damage. Much higher than even our most unnerfed version of the critical.

Ok - I went back and took a look at YAAM's spreadsheet.

First, if you want the same results then you are going to have to script the same changes Haen made to the proto files values. Second, I always thought YAAM was a little over powered; YAAM allows a 10mm Pistol using AP ammo to be able to cause viable damage against Power Armor. I completely disagree with this. (that's just one example)

I still think my mod does a better job of correcting the damage formula (even though I now think it has the bug with dropping the remainder during division, which can be fixed) without changing the proto files values. This is not to say things are balanced. I think the proto files values for ammo, weapons, and armor just need minor tweaking (the google spreadsheet I shared earlier has the changes I was thinking of).

Also, if you were also to stick with YAAM's formula; and if it's slightly overpowered as I think it is, then un-nerfing the criticals will take things over the top.

You also may waant to look into Weapon Perks and what affects they have. This may help you with your melee weapon thoughts. (note: in my spreadsheet I purpose changing these too)

 

[NovaRain]

I still think my mod does a better job of correcting the damage formula (even though I now think it has the bug with dropping the remainder during division, which can be fixed) without changing the proto files values.

Just curious, does it has something to do with the 0 damage issue if I change the value of ammo dmg mod to some bigger numbers? Like changing from 1/2 to 10/20, the ratio is still the same, and the final damage should be much higher (since there's a "+X" after armor DT/DR damage reduction in your formula). But actually it makes all attack with that ammo causing 0 damage, even if I have 100% critical chance.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Ok - I went back and took a look at YAAM's spreadsheet.

First, if you want the same results then you are going to have to script the same changes Haen made to the proto files values. Second, I always thought YAAM was a little over powered; YAAM allows a 10mm Pistol using AP ammo to be able to cause viable damage against Power Armor. I completely disagree with this. (that's just one example)

I think you're right, but I think this has more to do with the values he's assigned to the protos, than to the formula itself, which I think is really solid. For instance, the example you use, in my opinion stems from the fact that Haen's taken the (too) radical step of not only fixing the way AP ammo works, but also doubling the damage count (from 0.5 to 1); this should be toned down like you say, but the formula I really haven't found any problem with yet. And I've really, really, looked for one.

I still think my mod does a better job of correcting the damage formula (even though I now think it has the bug with dropping the remainder during division, which can be fixed) without changing the proto files values. This is not to say things are balanced. I think the proto files values for ammo, weapons, and armor just need minor tweaking (the google spreadsheet I shared earlier has the changes I was thinking of).

As long as we're restricting ourselves to the 10MM ammo example, I honestly think Haen's is still preferable to yours. Because, say what you will about the original formula, when it came to JHP vs AP against unarmored opponents, a 2 to 1 ratio of damage seems about right (there's a reason why hollow point ammo is banned by the Geneva Convention: the things are built for demolishing civilians), though Haen's 1.5-1 ratio is also okay. In your system, on the other hand, the difference is only 1 measly damage point; that's just way, way too low.

Also, if you were also to stick with YAAM's formula; and if it's slightly overpowered as I think it is, then un-nerfing the criticals will take things over the top.

I'll have a look at the protos and come up with some values I think make sense. But like I said, I'm convinced the most important part of crit damage control is uncoupling it from armor bypassing: this is the thing that's causing the 400+ insane criticals, and the system just doesn't make any sense. I think the effect of unnerfing criticals will be negligible compared to that.

You also may waant to look into Weapon Perks and what affects they have. This may help you with your melee weapon thoughts.

The ranged weapon perks are usually pretty retarded and have as little effect as possible in my system (long range stuff is already covered in my formula in a much more sophisticated way, and weapon penetrate just makes no sense at all). Haven't looked into the melee ones too much yet (I assumed they just concerned the sliding knockdowns which don't cost AP).

(note: in my spreadsheet I purpose changing these too)

I'll have a look. Cause I'm still not too sure what to do with melee.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Glovz, I'm also starting to see some serious issues with Haen's formula now. As I see it, there's one major systemic flaw which can't be addressed with protos:

Non-AP ammo pierces way too much armor. You were noting the problem of 10mm AP ammo doing viable damage against PA; a way bigger problem in my view is that JHP ammo does any damage against PA. Worse still is upper-mid level armor, like CA, where the advantage of AP rounds exists for low damage counts, but not for high ones (check out the 10MM AP graph for combat armor: from damages 13-16 JHP is the better choice).

I believe there is a way of eliminating both these problems and your overpowering concern with one simple change: reintroducing Ammo modifier penalties. The big problem with the way the original penalties worked was that they simply added an absolute DR value to the target, which made no sense (why would an unarmed target get extra resistance?) and did little to nothing to help armor block hollow points. What I propose is making it a relative penalty: a modifier of -50 increases by half the DT and DR of the target. This step also allows you to lower the damage multiplier and/or ammo multiplier of AP ammo without unbalancing things.

Here's some examples (for 8 and 16 damage for various armors with 10mm AP/JHP), with yours (at least, as much as I could find), Haen's and the original forumulas compared (sorry I didn't make a spreadsheet, but I haven't found an efficient way to do so yet).

 

[Glovz]

I still think my mod does a better job of correcting the damage formula (even though I now think it has the bug with dropping the remainder during division, which can be fixed) without changing the proto files values.

Just curious, does it has something to do with the 0 damage issue if I change the value of ammo dmg mod to some bigger numbers? Like changing from 1/2 to 10/20, the ratio is still the same, and the final damage should be much higher (since there's a "+X" after armor DT/DR damage reduction in your formula). But actually it makes all attack with that ammo causing 0 damage, even if I have 100% critical chance.

Sorry Jim to derail your thread for just a moment.

The "+X" was to help differentiate the final damage value depending on the ammo used.

And yes, I have to retest to be absolutely certain, but division dropping the remainder would definitely be the cause of 0 damage values occurring more often than they should.

 

[Glovz]

Glovz, I'm also starting to see some serious issues with Haen's formula now. As I see it, there's one major systemic flaw which can't be addressed with protos:

Non-AP ammo pierces way too much armor. You were noting the problem of 10mm AP ammo doing viable damage against PA; a way bigger problem in my view is that JHP ammo does any damage against PA. Worse still is upper-mid level armor, like CA, where the advantage of AP rounds exists for low damage counts, but not for high ones (check out the 10MM AP graph for combat armor: from damages 13-16 JHP is the better choice).

I believe there is a way of eliminating both these problems and your overpowering concern with one simple change: reintroducing Ammo modifier penalties. The big problem with the way the original penalties worked was that they simply added an absolute DR value to the target, which made no sense (why would an unarmed target get extra resistance?) and did little to nothing to help armor block hollow points. What I propose is making it a relative penalty: a modifier of -50 increases by half the DT and DR of the target. This step also allows you to lower the damage multiplier and/or ammo multiplier of AP ammo without unbalancing things.

Here's some examples (for 8 and 16 damage for various armors with 10mm AP/JHP), with yours (at least, as much as I could find), Haen's and the original forumulas compared (sorry I didn't make a spreadsheet, but I haven't found an efficient way to do so yet).

I reviewed the doc with the numbers for comparison.

Are you comfortable with AP ammo causing the same damage value for leather armor as it does for leather armor?

Also, you don't feel a raw damage value of 8 for 10mm pistol using JHP ammo causing a final damage value of 12 to be a little excessive?

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Are you comfortable with AP ammo causing the same damage value for leather armor as it does for leather armor?

You're completely right, and there's much worse consequences than that in using the Haen AP system. Once the ammo modifier goes up to 9, like Haen does for Gauss ammo, (or even further, like with AP rockets) every armor up to combat armor is like butter. So yeah, this is the second huge systemic issue with Haen's formula.

Luckily I think it can be solved in exactly the same way as the first one: make absolute values relative. So now an ammo mod of fifty, whether positive or negative, will affect the DT/DR by that percentage. I've made a new version of the list with the changes, and I think it looks good (I even added the gauss ammo data, where you'll also see an improvement).

Also, you don't feel a raw damage value of 8 for 10mm pistol using JHP ammo causing a final damage value of 12 to be a little excessive?

Nope, if anything I think it's probably a bit nerfed still (in case you missed my reason why, it's earlier in the thread). But this was the way it was in the original; did you seriously feel the 10mm pistol was overpowered when you played the game? Cause I didn't; if anything I felt the opposite.

 

[Glovz]

Are you comfortable with AP ammo causing the same damage value for leather armor as it does for leather armor?

You're completely right, and there's much worse consequences than that in using the Haen AP system. Once the ammo modifier goes up to 9, like Haen does for Gauss ammo, (or even further, like with AP rockets) every armor up to combat armor is like butter. So yeah, this is the second huge systemic issue with Haen's formula.

Luckily I think it can be solved in exactly the same way as the first one: make absolute values relative. So now an ammo mod of fifty, whether positive or negative, will affect the DT/DR by that percentage. I've made a new version of the list with the changes, and I think it looks good (I even added the gauss ammo data, where you'll also see an improvement).

Also, you don't feel a raw damage value of 8 for 10mm pistol using JHP ammo causing a final damage value of 12 to be a little excessive?

Nope, if anything I think it's probably a bit nerfed still (in case you missed my reason why, it's earlier in the thread). But this was the way it was in the original; did you seriously feel the 10mm pistol was overpowered when you played the game? Cause I didn't; if anything I felt the opposite.

The 10mm JHP still might considering the fixed hp, my thoughts were that the 10mm pistol damage range was to low (5-12), I had considered changing the ramge to 8-16 but then again I've been rethinking everything given your new approach and considerations.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

Well, I've finally come to understand why the combatdamage hookscript only runs once: it only tallies the total damage done by all the bullets to the target on a "hit" (remember those bursts where it'd say "you missed" and the guy who you aimed at still gets blown apart? Doesn't get calculated there). What this means is that I see little point in trying my hand at doing the damage calculations until (1) it becomes clear how the damage for the extra targets gets calculated (is armor even taken into account? I'm not even sure anymore) and (2) there's a way for adjusting the damage on "hits" (I have no idea how you would count the number of bullets that hit the target on a "hit", let alone a "miss").

The to hit calculations are completely fine because the tohit hook script gets called for every single bullet, but doing damage calculations would be a waste of time in my opinion because it would necessarily not affect one of the biggest parts of combat in Fallout. I assume all the damage formulas made up to this point don't affect bursts either.