Talk:Rifle

Having noticed the marked change (read: decrease) in performance of the homing rifle ammo and seeing only a vague and terse reference to ammo rebalancing, I decided to do some testing to try and quantify the change. To do so I mostly just flew around the world in fly/god mode with all creatures on passive and tested out how many shots it took to kill the various creatures of the world. Here are my results, with which I will be updating the Rifle page shortly. Do let me know if there are any discrepancies to be aware of!

• Homing rifle ammo seems to have had its damage no less than halved, from 6 damage per projectile to 3. It very consistently takes 7 shots to kill base hogs, desert/coast spitters, and crab hatchers (the first two of which are documented here as having 20 HP each and the last appearing to have the same, demonstrated by some further testing).
• Despite not being documented as such, normal rifle ammo also appears to have been nerfed from 5 damage per shot down to 4. It consistently requires 5 shots to kill base hogs, desert/coast spitters, and crab hatchers, 8 shots to kill forest spitters, and 20 shots to kill alpha forest spitters.
• Despite being documented as such, turbo rifle ammo does not appear to have had its damage adjusted, as it requires the same number of rounds as the normal rifle ammo to kill some of the aforementioned creatures. Testing with turbo ammo has been less extensive and primarily on hatchers but, if damage is consistent, this should not matter for the math.

Dr. Vistora (talk) 23:51, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to test this! Dumping the exact numbers is possible with mods, but the process seems a bit complicated (to me). --Ondar111 (talk) 19:40, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

In Patch 0.8.0.0 they did a Weapon Rebalancing. While they noted what changed, they did not provide values. I am uncertain of where the Damage Values currently shown were derived from but perhaps we need values from coding and not personal testing. Keep in mind that depending on where a Creature is hit determine how much "damage" is done, and thus different tests might result in different values. --Temporal Illusion (talk) 21:33, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Datamining the game would be most optimal, but I will leave that endeavor to somebody more talented than I, as it is beyond my abilities. That said, I am unsure about the statement that damage values actually vary based on hit location, as there seem to be no sources or indication of that. The only reason it appears to "vary" is because creatures can have inconsistent hitboxes and what appears to be a hit might not have registered as such. I took care to account for this in my testing by only counting shots that registered some hit indication (e.g. a sound or animation from the creature) and within this scope the damage and shots to kill were exactly consistent across over 20 of each creature tested. From an empirical standpoint I am confident in my tests, but if so desired I can acquire more data and record them for posterity. --Dr. Vistora (talk) 03:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

User:Robbyo4 did the testing using a mod that displays creature health in-game, confirming all your findings. Hit location does not matter, not in the sense of a damage falloff at least, it either registers or doesn't. Only Nobelisks have falloff. --Ondar111 (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Excellent, that's good to hear. --Dr. Vistora (talk) 01:00, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Has Ammo Damage Changed?

I noticed that the wiki lists both regular and Turbo Rifle Ammo as having a damage of 4 per bullet, but in 1.0 I've seen that it takes more shots from Turbo bullets to kill an enemy. Example, a Flying Crab Hatcher dies in 4 bullets with regular ammo, but it takes 5 bullets with Turbo ammo. Unfortunately we may have to wait until modding comes back online to verify the exact numbers though.

BratG7 (talk) 04:51, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Ammo damage for the Homing Ammo is not consistent between the Combat#Weapons (6 points) vs this page (3 points). Not sure which is correct--Jponline77 (talk) 00:28, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

As of 1.0.0.3 Regular=5, Turbo=4, Homing=3. Combat page is likely outdated as the last edit was before 1.0. --SerGreen (talk) 20:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)