Today we have a few myths suggested to me by Trovaner.
The first one is the myth that your bot is destroyed when the chassis reaches 0 HP. Trovaner thinks that this is not true, that the chassis has a certain fracture value and can go below 0 HP if the fracture damage is not exceeded. I happened to agree with him, but nothing wrong with finding out exactly what that fracture value
is and proving it, right?
I had all the necessary tools for this left over from the chassis HP myth, so it wasn't much work to set up. I just used my chassis HP Test bots, and used the F9 Python window to do fixed amounts of damage to them. I started with 50 damage, and kept applying it until the chassis reached 0 HP.
Even though 50 damage meets or exceeds the chassis fracture point and ended up destroying the bot, the chassis clearly went well below 0 HP, confirming that there is a fracture point and that 0 HP does not mean death.
So, this myth is CONFIRMED.
But we're not done yet--now I wanted to know just what that magical fracture value is. So I re-did the test, this time applying only 40 damage.
No matter how many times I hit Enter, the control board didn't spark. So the fracture is somewhere between 40 and 50.
After a few random trials and errors, I discovered it was 41.
As long as your chassis gets hit for 40 or less damage, you won't die. But if it's 41, you're in trouble.
So what about different bots? Since I already proved that a bigger chassis has more HP, might it have a higher fracture as well? I did the same test on a big chassis to find out.
41 damage is still enough to damage the control board, even with the maximum size chassis. So while size affects HP, it doesn't affect fracture.
The last test I did was with a steel-armored chassis. If size doesn't affect fracture, armor still might.
Nope. 40 damage still doesn't touch the control board, as shown in the picture, and 41 damage was still enough to kill the bot (I'll spare you the screenshot). So neither size nor armor affect the chassis fracture point--it's always 41.
The next myth is a bit more interesting. Trovaner thinks that caster armor does not, in fact, block all damage. I have personal experience in this regard with my Sacrifice popup bots, and know for a fact that casters aren't impenetrable. What intrigued me is the reason Trovaner suggested for this--that damage is calculated for components based on the distance from the point of impact. It seems this is what the instruction booklet says. If it's true, then RA2 is a lot more realistic than I thought. I've also noticed that the 15cm casters work a lot better at blocking damage than the 10cm ones, and the titanium half sheets in DSL never work perfectly at preventing damage, so there seems to be support for this myth. However, it might also be due to weapons slipping between cracks or temporarily overlapping and penetrating the mesh of such armors. This explanation also seems plausible, as I've never seen anything penetrate caster/half sheet armor unless it was moving very fast.
Time to find out the truth. I made a test bot with cinder blocks from Firebeetle's component pack as front armor, which form a solid wall with no cracks for weapons to slip through. Then I used a slow bot with Firebeetle's energy spike weapons, which do high damage with frequency, so they will keep doing damage even when they're not moving. This eliminates both movement and cracks from the equation, so if damage is indeed calculated based on distance from point of impact, then we should see the test bot's chassis get damaged as I hold the energy spikes against the cinder blocks. If not, then nothing should happen.
No matter how long I stay in this position, the test bot's chassis remains at full health. I even backed up for a few rams, and still nothing.
I'm not quite ready to call it busted, though the myth is definitely on thin ice. Next I tried using the plus.damage command in the Python window to directly damage the cinder blocks. Since they are attached right to the chassis, I should see a decrease in armor integrity as the cinder blocks are damaged.
100 damage yields nothing. Let's bump it up a notch.
10000 damage exceeds the cinder blocks' total hitpoints of 5000. And still, the chassis is at full health. But we're not quite done... time to
overdo it just to make sure! This time I targeted the control board instead of the cinder blocks, since apparently it has infinite HP. It's still attached right to the chassis, so if damage is based on distance from point of impact, the chassis should still get hurt.
If several billion damage to the control board won't scratch the chassis, nothing will. This myth is BUSTED. "Invincible" armor may not be impenetrable, but, regrettably, it's not because of any advanced damage calculation.
