Damage Details
FFAmod Features User Documentation Admin Documentation Coder Documentation Credits

Home
Up

The Details of Saber Damage

So, what the heck is the damage system? It is commonly held that the mechanism is random. Although I have not completely grok'd the damage system used in the base game, Jedimod, and this mod, I have to say that this does not appear to be true.

Rather, there are two mechanisms for determining the damage of a saber hit. The fist mechanism is for standard swings in any stance save strong/red. In this case a hit is a hit is a hit. The damage is always the same. The second mechanism applies to specials and to the normal strong/red swing. This method calculates damage based on an optimal point in the animation and the relative speed of you and your opponent -- think of it as being just the right distance from your opponent at the right time to score a maximum hit. If you are not quite at the right place at the right time, the damage is reduced on a linear scale away from that optimum point and time. If the algorithm produces a damage below the minimum (ie. you really miss!) you are awarded the minimum damage. If the algorithm produces a damage larger than the maximum (ie. you really hit!), you are awarded the maximum damage.

Note: there are some other small modifiers for special conditions, but they don't change the damage more than +/- 5 points.

To illustrate, here is an example. Suppose you are flying over top of your opponent executing the yellow flip attack. If you are positioned right over top of your opponent exactly half way through the animation you will score the maximum hit. Similarly, if you were as close as possible to your opponent exactly one third of the way through a lunge, you would score a maximum hit.

The following table shows the damage values for standard attacks save the strong/red attack.

Saber Stance Damage
Blue/Light 30
Yellow/Medium 60
Orange 55
Purple 30

This next table shows the strong/red standard swing and all of the specials. The minimum damage, maximum damage and optimal timing are show. The optimal time is normalized to a total animation time of 1.

Saber Stance and Move

Min Max Time
Red/Strong Standard 2 120 .5
Red/Strong Special (DFA) 2 180 .65
Red/Strong Back Attack (Back Sweep) 2 30 .5
Yellow/Medium Special (Flip Attack) 2 80 .5
Yellow/Medium Back Attack (Back Sweep) 2 25 .5
Blue/Light Special (Lunge) 2 30 .3
Blue/Light Back Attack (Back Stab) 2 30 .5
Orange Special (Vertical Twirl) 2 70 .5
Orange Back Attack (Back Sweep) 2 25 .5
Purple Special (Crab Twirl) 2 70 .5
Orange Back Attack (Back Sweep) 2 25 .5