Fallout 2: How is burst damage calculated?

[Cyrus]

Hello everyone. I'm aware of the damage formula, but In particular I want to know how multiple bullets are added within the formula. Does each bullet go through the whole formula separately and then they all get added together once they've gone through the formula separately? or do the bullets go as far as (Base Damage+RB) * x/y * CM/2 , then all the damage of the bullets get added at this point and then they proceed all together through the rest of the formula through DT and DR reductions?

This is important because I would like to mod the formula and its important how bursts get affected. Basically the difference is how many times the DT gets applied. if all the bullets go through the formula together then DT gets applied once, but if each go through it separately then DT gets applied each time for each bullet. Clearly quite a difference.


Thanks for your help.

 

[Magnus]

As legendary assembly programmer Ravachol discovered some 8 years ago, the burst fire is a loop that iterates over each bullet, giving each of them a separate chance to hit (and I believe even critical hit as well), and also applying the damage calculation individually. So DT is very important against burstfire.

You can try to change this with the hs_combatdamage hook script provided by sfall. It will give you access to how many bullets hit the target, what critter it was and what weapon was used, but not what type of ammo the attacker had (though I believe there are critter functions that can determine this). I am not sure how you would account for damage-increasing perks such as Penetrate, I suspect they are already factored in.

 

[JimTheDinosaur]

As legendary assembly programmer Ravachol discovered some 8 years ago, the burst fire is a loop that iterates over each bullet, giving each of them a separate chance to hit (and I believe even critical hit as well), and also applying the damage calculation individually. So DT is very important against burstfire.

This is only true for 1/6th of the bullets (of the center stream), the 2/3rds of the outer streams and remaining 1/6th of the center stream are calculated in bulk form, checking for hits, adding damage (including bonus ranged damage, which is why you really need that for miniguns) until a single bullet misses then all the remaining bullets miss as well (or rather pass on to the next tile in the "stream").

See this thread for how it works.

And this thread might be relevant for cyrus.

 

[Cyrus]

Thanks guys, very helpful, more than I expected. Although I was asking about something slightly different, I may not have been clear enough in my question. (what do you expect from a newbie! )

Well, I'm not intending to modify anything about bursts. I'm just working on my own way of balancing weapons and ammos and armors, and the damage formula is at the center of it all, so its important to have a correct understanding of it. I'm thinking of placing DT right up front in the damage formula, and that can prevent any damage from low damage-per-shot weapons like miniguns to go through at all on high DTs armors, and it wouldn't make sense if miniguns didn't cause damage but the hunting rifle did!

It matters at which point the damage from all bullets are added up. It makes a big difference whether they all get added before they reach DT reduction or after. But from what you guys said it sounds like every bullet goes through the whole formula one by one using the CM from the first bullet and they get added at the end.

I guess I need to try and find out!


Thanks guys.

 

[burn]

I think there's already a number of mods that mess with the damage formula... you might want to check them out first.

 

[phobos2077]

Well, I'm not intending to modify anything about bursts. I'm just working on my own way of balancing weapons and ammos and armors, and the damage formula is at the center of it all, so its important to have a correct understanding of it.

I really hope you are not doing another version of AmmoMod inside sfall? Just in case, sfall allows you to fully replace damage formula by script alone.

 

[Cyrus]

I think there's already a number of mods that mess with the damage formula... you might want to check them out first.

I have, I didn't like parts of their approaches. I find them a bit over-complicated and some changes unnecessary. Not that there is anything wrong with them, but I would like try doing it differently, see how it turns out.

I really hope you are not doing another version of AmmoMod inside sfall?

I don't think so, but I'm interested to know why you say that? Would you elaborate?