Damage

1
We have all noticed that JKA damage can be suspect. Mostly with regards to people living through things they probably shouldn't have.

First let's get some myths out of the way:
Myth: "Directs always do less damage than splash, because directs are subject to location-based damage modifiers and splash isn't."
100% false. All damage is subject to location-based damage modifiers, splash included. You can hit a box next to someone's foot and only deal 50% damage because the splash "hits" their foot. You can also hit a box next to someone's head and deal 130% damage because the splash was close to their head. It works both ways.

Myth: "You do more damage splashing the ground right next to someone's foot than hitting their foot directly."
Generally false. Even if both shots get the same body hit location, the direct is not subject to splash damage reduction, i.e. decreased damage due to distance from explosion. A direct blob to the legs will deal 42 damage (60 * .7), while a blob near the legs will deal some slightly smaller number, like 37 (54 * .7).

Here's how location-based damage works:
Foot: 50% damage.
Leg: 70% damage.
Chest/back/waist: 100% damage.
Arm: 85% damage.
Hand: 60% damage.
Head: 130% damage.

On top of that, jedis also take reduced damage from blobs, demp mouse2, rockets, thermals, mines, and detpacks.
Jedi is target of one of the above weapons: 75% damage.
You can thus see how a jedi could live through a rocket air: let's say it's a hand shot, 100 damage * 60% * 75% = 45 damage.

Here are six screenshots taken shortly before firing my weapon. I used a custom-compiled server mod that printed all damage and hit locations. See if you can guess which location was detected for each shot.

Image


Click to see the answers:
  Reveal hidden contents
1. Hand
2. Chest
3. Arm
4. Chest
5. Chest
6. Arm
As you can see, hit location detection is really screwy and inconsistent for both splash and directs. It's kind of shitty that you can get screwed out of 40% of your damage because the game magically decided that you hit someone's hand instead of their chest -- especially when you hit neither because it was splash damage.

IMO, even if it worked properly, location-based damage makes the most sense in games with hitscan weapons that can be aimed precisely (CSGO). It's not well-suited to JKA, where most weapons are slow-moving projectiles and can't be aimed nearly at such a level of precision. If you're trying to blob air a jumping jedi, how can you possibly control whether you hit his arm or his chest? Not to mention that even if you did hit his chest, the detection is so screwy that the game might think you hit his hand anyway. And even for games like CSGO, they usually don't use as micromanaged of hitboxes as JKA - here are CSGO's hit locations:
Chest/arms/hands: 100% damage.
Stomach: 125% damage.
Legs/feet: 75% damage.
Head: 400% damage.

We've already improved saber consistency by preventing location modifiers from affecting saber, because we agreed that tanking saberthrows with your hand is silly. Here would be my suggestion for going further with improving location-based damage:
  • Remove feet hitbox; make it part of legs.
  • Remove hands and arms hitboxes; make them part of chest.
Thus, you would have a simple system that I think is more fitting to JKA:
Legs/feet: 70% damage.
Head: 130% damage.
Everywhere else: 100% damage.
This rewards going for directs (since you get 100% modifier instead of 70% modifier) while preventing you from getting screwed by hitting hands when the game magically decides that you did. It also prevents getting randomly screwed by magically hitting feet instead of legs because the game decided you did.
cron