Tremulous Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stof on June 05, 2006, 12:13:17 pm
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I have a small question about that. I have been one hit killed by that attack quite often already. Always as an unprotected human of course. But I never was able to reproduce it myself so, is there some trick to make it work or am I just bad with the Marauder ? ( it wouldn't surprise me, I prefer playing with the Dragoon :D )
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I've never seen it do a one-hit-kill, always needs 2 zaps to kill an unarmoured human. Might have been that someone whacked you just before the zap hit.
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Zaps do a % of their max damage for every time unit the marauder stays in range. So a marauder that stays in range for the full discharge does more damage than one who hits and retreats before the zap's max potential has been reached. If it does 100 though I don't know. I always thought it did 80.
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Full discharge is lethal to unarmored humans. I've killed lots of unarmored humans this way. If you can't kill with it, you either overlooked your victim's light armor or the zap was interrupted before full discharge. Just stay close.
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I've never seen it do a one-hit-kill, always needs 2 zaps to kill an unarmoured human. Might have been that someone whacked you just before the zap hit.
Could be that, but again, there were a few situations where I can hardly believe I've missed some other damage done to me.
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Could be that, but again, there were a few situations where I can hardly believe I've missed some other damage done to me.
I'm sure lots of my zap kills were fresh meat that just left medistation or telenode. No damage done before zap kill.
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If you can manage to sneak up on an unarmored human, and deliver the shock right into his backside , and stay for the duration of the shock (is it like 1.5 -2 seconds?), then you will 1 shot him each time, I do it all the time, just stay right in his face till the shock has delivered its full blast :)
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If you can manage to sneak up on an unarmored human, and deliver the shock right into his backside , and stay for the duration of the shock (is it like 1.5 -2 seconds?), then you will 1 shot him each time, I do it all the time, just stay right in his face till the shock has delivered its full blast :)
I zapped naked humans often with one zap, maybe there is also a "entrance-point" for the zap, so jumping and aiming for the head would do max damage, but zapping from "ground" would only deal half dmg.
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Looks like there's still some speculation on that attack. Nobody has a definitve answer ? Who's in for some source code diving :)
I'm at work now so it's not the time for me.
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This is from the drivers manual:
In addition to the Marauder’s abilities, the Advanced Marauder can use a chain lightning attack. To use this, press the Secondary Attack button while aiming at a nearby human or human structure. If it connects the electric shock will jump to up to two other nearby targets doing full damage to the first, half damage to the second and one third damage to the third over a period of one second provided the attacker stays within range.
So its a targeted damage over time area attack, one second to be precise, with the ability to hit 3 targets, and judging from the above quote, it would appear that the first target is recieving full damage, meaning that even if you are using the zap attack in a crowd, and your primary target is an unarmored human, and you stay next to him for 1 second while the shock pumps, then you will 1 shot him, and damage 2 others in the process :)
And yes you can 1 shot an unarmored human, no doubt about it, seen it done and done it myself often enough.
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I don't know what version you are playing that you can 1 shot with a zap.
A full duration zap on an unarmoured human does 80 damage and it's not affected by hit location or angle.
If you think you're getting a 1 shot zap, you are probably either landing a bite for 20 or 40 points of damage while the zap is still unloading, then the zap finishes them off, or your hitting someone who's not at full health.
Look at the code or set up a game and test it.
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Looks like there's still some speculation on that attack. Nobody has a definitve answer ? Who's in for some source code diving :)
Source code seems a little strange here because it says the zap does 80 damage over 1 second. That doesn't cope with my experience. It looks like there's something buried deep inside damage-handling procedure like "zap is always headshot" or something...
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I don't know what version you are playing that you can 1 shot with a zap.
A full duration zap on an unarmoured human does 80 damage and it's not affected by hit location or angle.
If you think you're getting a 1 shot zap, you are probably either landing a bite for 20 or 40 points of damage while the zap is still unloading,
Should be impossible, you cannot bite until the zap is reloaded.
then the zap finishes them off, or your hitting someone who's not at full health.
As I said, I was one hit killed by a lone Marauder quite a few times already and I'm nearly 100% sure I was at full health. One instance was testing a new map on satgnu and there just wasn't enouth players on the server. When all you do is spawn and get face to face a few seconds later with the only alien player that is attacking, you know you haven't lost HP yet.
Maybe the zap attack can chain on the same target when there isn't other targets nearby ?
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Will it also do 80 damage to a battlesuit ? and 80 versus the player in armour and hat ?
Maybe the base damage is 80, and then the multiplier used to determine the effect versus different armors adds and subtracts from that ?
I havent a clue if this kind of multiplier is used, so its pure speculation on my part.
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Holy... you're right about the not being able to bite in the middle of a zap, Stof.
That explains a lot about why I am so crap with adv. marauder.
Anyway, after a quick 1 vs 1 on the LAN here, I got some suprising results testing zap damage vs armour types:
Unarmoured: 80
Light Armour: 20
Helmet: 40
Light Armour + Helmet: 20
Battlesuit: 20
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Holy... you're right about the not being able to bite in the middle of a zap, Stof.
That explains a lot about why I am so crap with adv. marauder.
That's why you should Swipe-Swipe-Zap and not Zap-Swipe-Swipe :)
Anyway, after a quick 1 vs 1 on the LAN here, I got some suprising results testing zap damage vs armour types:
Unarmoured: 80
Light Armour: 20
Helmet: 40
Light Armour + Helmet: 20
Battlesuit: 20
Wow, it makes quite a difference ! Is that the same reduction that for the Overmind attack ? ( it has some incredibly crappy damage when you have some armor : only 2-3 damage per second when you are as close as possible :) )
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Ok numbers dont lie, nice to see it black on white :)
Maybe I thought I was 1 shotting humans, while in fact I was chaining 2 shocks up close, and mistaking 2 bursts for 1 long burst, good test Chompers :)
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Wow thats kinda lame. I hope the armor's and damage calculations get seriously balanced in the future, ive always felt thats the only thing thats making the humans a tad "overpowered" right now is the armor (because at S1 a human could eaisly get owned, but at the same time easily own aliens with rifles, seeing as they have no real armor, but when S2+S3 comes along, all of a sudden even going out with a tyrant against a light armor/helmit guy with pulse can take out most of your health).
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Ok numbers dont lie, nice to see it black on white :)
Maybe I thought I was 1 shotting humans, while in fact I was chaining 2 shocks up close, and mistaking 2 bursts for 1 long burst, good test Chompers :)
You say that but there might be a bug hidden somewhere anyway ;) It's not because Chompers didn't trigger it in his tests that there isn't one.
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Well Stof, you need to find out how to duplicate this "bug" and tell us. ;)
Also Korjax, that is just for the marauder zap and shouldn't be confused with the general melee damage reduction that armour provides.
Some stats for melee, using the adv. marauder's bite vs. head / torso / feet.
Unarmoured: 80 / 40 / 20
L. Armour: 80 / 14 / 7
L. Armour + Helmet: 24 / 14 / 7
Battlesuit: 16 / 8 / 4
Remember too, that marauder has a fairly weak attack, less than a dretch, but more than a basilisk. Dragoons hit for twice this damage.
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Its attack might be weak, but it has quite some good attack speed. I'd like to see the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if it had nearly twice the attack speed of a dragoon.
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I'd like to see the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if it had nearly twice the attack speed of a dragoon.
Adv. Granger - 1s (swipe) / 1s (blob)
Dretch - 0.5s
Basilisk - 0.6s
Adv. Basilisk - 0.5s (swipe) / 2s (gas)
Marauder - 0.5s
Adv. Marauder - 0.4s (bite) / 2s (zap)
Dragoon - 0.7s (bite)
Adv. Dragoon - 0.6 (bite) / 1s (barb)
Tyrant - 0.75 (swipe)
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I do the one zap kill to unarmored humans all the time (adv mara is my fav alien). 90% of the time you will kill the human, but i bite first, just in case.
As far as armor balance, it sure is off. Especially with the helmet. Most of the times, it's better wearing a helmet only the light armor only. The helmet has too many features build in to protect this much.
Mara is the best alien against turrets though.
All u have to do is circle them, and bite. If ur adv, then bite, bite, zap and a turret is gone.
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Oh trust me, its not just the zap from my experience.
Look at those numbers. Notice how just wearing a helmit and light armor (a total of around 200 credits.. oh my!) makes it so humans instantly take 3x-4x less damage for such a cheap price. This SERIOUSLY hinders aliens that either are not an experienced goon player that know when to run away and strike at the right time, or a maradur player who can easily hold his own against human fire due to dodgeing.
Honestly, a lone dretch against a lone human at S1 will be a fairly even match. The human has range and letal accuracy, while the dretch has high manuverability and a letal bite.
Once you get to S2 however, things change. The human with Helmit and Armor plus a pulse rifle against say an adv. baslisk or an adv. maradur, and the human easily has the upper hand, seeing as only 24 or so damage max is done to a guy with a helmit is done, and thats IF you can get close. And for how much? 200 credits (or so). That is not alot at all, considering the benefits (RADAR, poison gas doesnt do anything, ect).
I'm not saying make the 2 sides exactly the same. I am saying that human's technology is way to cheap for what its worth once they get to S2. There is a reason in many RPG games armor tends to cost alot more than say a good sword, because it helps alot in defense. The same is for tremulous, execpt that the armor is dirt cheap.
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Oh trust me, its not just the zap from my experience.
Look at those numbers. Notice how just wearing a helmit and light armor (a total of around 200 credits.. oh my!) makes it so humans instantly take 3x-4x less damage for such a cheap price. This SERIOUSLY hinders aliens that either are not an experienced goon player that know when to run away and strike at the right time, or a maradur player who can easily hold his own against human fire due to dodgeing.
Honestly, a lone dretch against a lone human at S1 will be a fairly even match. The human has range and letal accuracy, while the dretch has high manuverability and a letal bite.
Once you get to S2 however, things change. The human with Helmit and Armor plus a pulse rifle against say an adv. baslisk or an adv. maradur, and the human easily has the upper hand, seeing as only 24 or so damage max is done to a guy with a helmit is done, and thats IF you can get close. And for how much? 200 credits (or so). That is not alot at all, considering the benefits (RADAR, poison gas doesnt do anything, ect).
I'm not saying make the 2 sides exactly the same. I am saying that human's technology is way to cheap for what its worth once they get to S2. There is a reason in many RPG games armor tends to cost alot more than say a good sword, because it helps alot in defense. The same is for tremulous, execpt that the armor is dirt cheap.
unprotected humans get oneshot killed or nearly by anything the aliens throw at them when doing an headshot. Try going around the maps against dragoons without and helmet. That single piece of equipment is a must have if you want even a small chance of survival outside of the human base.
Also, you've misread the stats, Armor is enouth to get the maximal damage reduction against marauder zap, and it costs 70 only.
Helmet is 90 which gives the two of them for a grand price of 160 credits :)
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He was referring to bites
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all human stuff is seriously too cheap.
regardless, barely anyone uses the gun that gives the most bang for your buck... shotgun. Seriously underused...
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Since one of my hobbies is hunting goons and tyrants when playing human, the SG is the gun of choice. It's most bang for you buck, like u mentioned, so getting killed by what you're chasing isn't too big of a deal since you alwasy have enough for the same. It also takes a goon down very quickly if you know what you're doing.
It's also great while chasing & getting ambushed by dretches and basilisks. It killes dretches in one and basis in 2 shots.
The only alien this weapon sucks against is the mara, my fav alien.
Go figure
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Since one of my hobbies is hunting goons and tyrants when playing human, the SG is the gun of choice. It's most bang for you buck, like u mentioned, so getting killed what you're chasing isn't too big of a deal since you alwasy have enough for the same.
It's also great then chasing & getting ambushed by dretches and basilisks.
The only alien this weapon sucks against is the mara, my fav alien.
mara vs shotgun?
SG ftw!
If you have a decent aim, maras fall like flies to the SG, even better than to the chaingun. You just have to get close enough.
Its a matter of timing, most maras go for the straight headshot, and jump over your head. It takes some training but after a while you just have to aim upward in the right second, BOOM, full shotty into mara-belly :)
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I don't use the chaingun at all so I wouldnt know, but las gun and mass are the best ones against maras, in my opinion. SG can take care of a mara, but not a good mara. If it's me as mara vs. a human with SG, chances are I'm the one left alive.
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I don't use the chaingun at all so I wouldnt know, but las gun and mass are the best ones against maras, in my opinion. SG can take care of a mara, but not a good mara. If it's me as mara vs. a human with SG, chances are I'm the one left alive.
Its allways a question of skill, allmost every good player can take down a noob Tyrant even if he is naked.
I could say the same about massdriver, if i'm a mara and you hold a massdriver, chances are high i win :)
While lasgun is just another "hold-that-fire-button-and-never-let-go" it just drains the marauder over a longer period (200 clip, and slow fire rate, the possibility you hit "something" is bigger), just like the chaingun, fire and forget, if only 1/4 of your clip hits the target, its dead.
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I don't use the chaingun at all so I wouldnt know, but las gun and mass are the best ones against maras, in my opinion. SG can take care of a mara, but not a good mara. If it's me as mara vs. a human with SG, chances are I'm the one left alive.
That my friend, is what we, the good SG using humans, want you to believe 8)
Shotgun is the best weapon against Mara in my opinion. Chaingun is for Dragoon and Tyrants with not so bad performance against Marauder. SG works very good for all aliens and it is so cheap :)
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...but Luci is the best, just aim at the ground where the Mara will land and BOOM... Splat! :D
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I don't like to meet lonely shotgunners with armor and helmet as a marauder. But when he has some friends with him, it's much more fun... for me of course :wink:
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A full discharge headshot zap from a auder can kill a naked human with 100hp? I've played around abit on boring 1vs1 game's and I have seen it first hand, perhaps a more experienced player or a developer will put his 2 cents on the subject. I think thats how the game was designed, what might happend is that the if u zap directly above the human the zap does head + 1/2 body damage but that's my wild guess. I guess someone will have too look closely at the source code to figure that out.
Also I agree with the statement that more humans should use shotgun + helm and light armor against Marauders.
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I don't think zap actually registers a path as it travels, it just locks onto a persons torso while in range.
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When i play as adv mara i'm always killing naked humans with only 1 zap (im zapping when jumping over human, staying near him until zap end, and when is end human is already dead ) :wink:
Sorry for my poor english, you can correct me if you whant :roll:
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From experience I know it doesn't happen and I tested it just now and confirmed there are NO 1 zap kills. Most likely a dretch hit him before you or someone slashes just before he zaps.
If you don't believe me just do as I always do when testing.
Start first tremulous.
/devmap atcs
/g_humanstage 2
/g_alienstage 2
join humans, spawn, put model somewhere in middle
ctrl+alt+ del
Minimize first tremulous
Start tremulous a second time
connect, instead of internet choose local. Join your own server.
join aliens
/give funds 9
evolve to advanced marauder
sit on top of head+zap/ jump+zap do as you please. QED, There are NO 1 ZAP KILLS.
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From experience I know it doesn't happen and I tested it just now and confirmed there are NO 1 zap kills. Most likely a dretch hit him before you or someone slashes just before he zaps.
I have been one hit killed by Adv Marauders on a game with 2 aliens : one Adv Marauder and the other play was never seen, probably builder. In that situation, and considering I was freshly spawned, it was probably some lag problem or maybe some special trick for the one hit kill like the trick to do a headshot with a dretch standing on the ground.
sit on top of head+zap/ jump+zap do as you please. QED, There are NO 1 ZAP KILLS.
Bah, your test doesn't take into account the lag, one of the players is special since he is the server and in all cases, the fact that you couldn't reproduce a bug doesn't mean it doesn't exist ;)
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When people say they do it constantly I doubt it'd be a bug. Lag does not factor into zap damage calculation as far as I know and since I tested it while sitting right on top of the human head and the human still survived the headshot damage multiplier doesn't come into play. The only way lag could come into play is if he slashed you, you didn't notice it and he zapped right after.
Now you show me the way. I play marauder enough to know it's already hard enough to stay in range while being shot and I've never had a confirmed one zap kill.
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Myself, I haven't seen anyone do it consistently that's for sure ! If someone here can really do it with a 100% succes rate, then he has to tell us how it's done !
Else, there just isn't enouth proof of bug yet.
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From experience I know it doesn't happen and I tested it just now and confirmed there are NO 1 zap kills. Most likely a dretch hit him before you or someone slashes just before he zaps.
If you don't believe me just do as I always do when testing.
Start first tremulous.
/devmap atcs
/g_humanstage 2
/g_alienstage 2
join humans, spawn, put model somewhere in middle
ctrl+alt+ del
Minimize first tremulous
Start tremulous a second time
connect, instead of internet choose local. Join your own server.
join aliens
/give funds 9
evolve to advanced marauder
sit on top of head+zap/ jump+zap do as you please. QED, There are NO 1 ZAP KILLS.
I know that damages arn't random but I actually did exactly what Survivor said and set up a server with a friend who ran around as a naked human. I zapped him without slashing with a full discharge 15 times. Of the 15 times I killed him with a single full discharge zap twice. I'm still not sure how the human got that extra 20 damange.
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From experience I know it doesn't happen and I tested it just now and confirmed there are NO 1 zap kills. Most likely a dretch hit him before you or someone slashes just before he zaps.
If you don't believe me just do as I always do when testing.
Start first tremulous.
/devmap atcs
/g_humanstage 2
/g_alienstage 2
join humans, spawn, put model somewhere in middle
ctrl+alt+ del
Minimize first tremulous
Start tremulous a second time
connect, instead of internet choose local. Join your own server.
join aliens
/give funds 9
evolve to advanced marauder
sit on top of head+zap/ jump+zap do as you please. QED, There are NO 1 ZAP KILLS.
I know that damages arn't random but I actually did exactly what Survivor said and set up a server with a friend who ran around as a naked human. I zapped him without slashing with a full discharge 15 times. Of the 15 times I killed him with a single full discharge zap twice. I'm still not sure how the human got that extra 20 damange.
So, there is still some suspicion. Could you do the same test but the human will use some armour and compare the amount of damage done each time. Maybe we'll see some pater emerging ( like : 20 damage always except sometimes you get 26 and sometimes 28 ) If that happens like that, it probably mean the alien attack can chain on the same target.
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I think it might be lag related, something to interfere with the timers for the zap. As I managed to pull it off to my suprise on the db@ test server playing pulse70, although the server was stuttering at the time.
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I think I've solved the mystery: g_weapon.c lines 1166-1167:
damage = ceil( ( (float)msec / LEVEL2_AREAZAP_TIME ) *
LEVEL2_AREAZAP_DMG * damageFraction );
Quake3 engine runs this piece of code 20 times a second. Each time, damage dealt to the first zap target should be equal to 4. Notice that the damage franction is ceiled, not rounded. If the server has a few more players moving, shooting etc. all at the same time, it's guaranteed msec will NOT be less than or equal to 50 (1000 / 20 = 50). It'll be always slightly more so the damage fraction will ceil to 5 and bang, here comes 20 extra damage. And it also explains why this won't trigger on a two-player server. It's not loaded enough.
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Submitted it to bugzilla yet? This is an unintended consequence if I ever saw one.
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Hey, that's exactly what Happened today : I could see my healt drop 5 HP by 5 HP and bam, I was dead :)
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https://bugzilla.icculus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2735
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https://bugzilla.icculus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2735
Changing ceil() to round() should work too with a little damage fraction twiddling.
Right now, damage is dealt this way:
r = 1/traget_count
fraction = 2*r - 2*target*r*r - r*r
1 target - 4hp (1 = 4.0 ceiled)
2 targets - 3hp (3/4 = 3.0 ceiled), 1hp (1/4 = 1.0 ceiled)
3 targets - 3hp (5/9 = 2.22 ceiled), 2hp (3/9 = 1.33 ceiled), 1hp (1/9 = 0.44 ceiled)
These numbers also don't cope with manual.
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I think I've solved the mystery: g_weapon.c lines 1166-1167:
damage = ceil( ( (float)msec / LEVEL2_AREAZAP_TIME ) *
LEVEL2_AREAZAP_DMG * damageFraction );
Quake3 engine runs this piece of code 20 times a second. Each time, damage dealt to the first zap target should be equal to 4. Notice that the damage franction is ceiled, not rounded. If the server has a few more players moving, shooting etc. all at the same time, it's guaranteed msec will NOT be less than or equal to 50 (1000 / 20 = 50). It'll be always slightly more so the damage fraction will ceil to 5 and bang, here comes 20 extra damage. And it also explains why this won't trigger on a two-player server. It's not loaded enough.
I think your right, Usually I get the dreaded 100 dmg zap against a naked human with alot of players running around. Everyone should thank Next_ghost for solving this mystery.