Tactics Specimen Information

[RainbowCakez]

Just wondering; Do Specimens recieve more damage from bullets/arrows when they're on fire?

A few people have said, if you light a Scrake on fire, a Crossbow to the head will do 1.5x more damage than its initial headshot damage... But, others disagreed... So I'm not sure.
You seem to know the games data and damage entries well. Does it?

 

[Raziel]

I highly doubt that.
Headless Specimen takes more damage, though.

 

[scary ghost]

Just wondering; Do Specimens recieve more damage from bullets/arrows when they're on fire?

A few people have said, if you light a Scrake on fire, a Crossbow to the head will do 1.5x more damage than its initial headshot damage... But, others disagreed... So I'm not sure.
You seem to know the games data and damage entries well. Does it?

No, fire doesn't make the weapons any stronger. All it does do burn damage over time and make specimens do the panic dance. In a sense, it makes your weapons "stronger" in that you need less bullets to kill now, but no, it doesn't make them do more damage or anything of that sort.

 

[RainbowCakez]

No, fire doesn't make the weapons any stronger. All it does do burn damage over time and make specimens do the panic dance. In a sense, it makes your weapons "stronger" in that you need less bullets to kill now, but no, it doesn't make them do more damage or anything of that sort.

Ah, I see. A bit disappointing to hear (Being one less positive of being a firebug),but thanks for clearing that up.

 

[xebo]

Maybe it doesn't make your weapons stonger, BUT it does make headshots much harder to hit!

...wait

 

[Aze]

Scary_ghost, i am once again very grateful for you informative posts, since you always go to the CODE SOURCES, meaning your information is always accurate! EVERYONE should read this info to understand what weapons to use / not to use / how to stun Scrakes etc. Very, very useful!

About the Scrake breaking free from stuns, i have been thinking that it might be some kind of "cancel-stun/flinch-when-damaged-too-much"-thing, some kind of weird bug / wrong programming.
It is kinda similar to the unlimited flinching (and its bug) that was available before the patching when everyone and their grandma were running around with katanas. Then, lots of people (including myself ) got really pissed at some people who were shooting the Scrake when you were trying to flinch-lock them, because when the Scrake got damaged from a different source than the flinchlocking person, they broke free from the flinch and immediately retaliated.

Can the "break-free-early-from-stuns"-bug somehow be related to that?

 

[outofrealman]

Scrakes flinching should be cause by heavy damage to scrakes. (even highter will stun them) Cos LAR, M14, machete and even berserker use knife alt-fire can flinch scrakes back then.

Sometimes, (very rare in fact) fleshpounds will also flinch. No idea on how it on fleshpounds. But 1 out of may be 50 times if you keep attacking a raging fleshpound, you can flinch (stun lock) a fleshpound. He just never attack you if you keep moving.

 

[scary ghost]

@Aze
The bug of breaking out of stun early is something I don't know how to explain. The only code I could find was related to flinching/stunning is in the KFMonster.uc file, function PlayDirectionalHit(). The funny thing is the naming of the variables: StunsRemaining and bSTUNNED. The names seem to imply that that body of code is for stunning but we all know scrakes can still be stunned multiple times which leads me to believe that chunk of code is for flinching. I can't find any other code that would cause a scrake to stun so I really don't know why it works. All I have is some black box testing to narrow down the necessary damage and everyone's first hand experience that multiple stunning and early interrupts can occur.

 

[Krausier]

Very good post here I had no idea that a fp normal attack can reset its rage timer this will help be greatly when i'm going toe to toe with one.

Two thumbs up

 

[kf_andrei]

Rage reset works only with melee weapons no? I mean you cannot effectively kite a FP with 9mm ?

 

[Raziel]

Doesn't matter what weapon you use.
Yeah, you probably could kill a FP with the 9mm... given that you've lotsa time & ammo

 

[scary ghost]

You can 9mm a fp if you want. You'll mostly likely run out of ammo before then and bore everyone else on the server. That's why lots of zerkers/medics will carry a lar. Deals solid damage against a fp but won't enrage him.

 

[Benjamin]

It might be worth noting that startling a fleshpound with a grenade also resets his rage timer, since it switches to another state. Of course, it's not a very efficient way of doing it (due to the cost and limit of grenades) but it can be done.

 

[Euclix]

I had an idea. I think what might be causing the scrake to break stun early is going over the rage threshold. If he is stunned at 90% health then shot down to less than 75% without it being a stunning blow, the rage mechanic probably activates and supersedes the current stun. Just an idea, pure speculation. From a coding standpoint, that would make sense to me.

 

[scary ghost]

It might be worth noting that startling a fleshpound with a grenade also resets his rage timer, since it switches to another state. Of course, it's not a very efficient way of doing it (due to the cost and limit of grenades) but it can be done.

Ah, did not know that. I will add it in to the post. Thanks Benjamin.

I had an idea. I think what might be causing the scrake to break stun early is going over the rage threshold. If he is stunned at 90% health then shot down to less than 75% without it being a stunning blow, the rage mechanic probably activates and supersedes the current stun. Just an idea, pure speculation. From a coding standpoint, that would make sense to me.

Hrm, that is a possibility. Just another one of those quirks in the code that no one will ever figure out.

 

[Big_BenKYS]

Every now and then I see a Scrake go into this weird animation where it looks like he's running in slow motion, sometimes I see Gorefasts do this too. What exactly causes it? Is it just when they're near death?

 

[scary ghost]

Every now and then I see a Scrake go into this weird animation where it looks like he's running in slow motion, sometimes I see Gorefasts do this too. What exactly causes it? Is it just when they're near death?

Yeah, I've seen before, both in solo games and online. I don't know why it happens but I see it most often in a 1 man game. An unperked crossbow head shot usually does the trick under those conditions. But, I rarely see it happen as the scrake hp increases. It might be a bug with how the scrake enters the rage state but that's just a guess off the top of my head.

 

[Big_BenKYS]

Also, is there a specific spot there the Scrake's head hitbox goes when he is stunned? When he bends his head down it is in the right spot, but I've noticed when he looks left to right I can't seem to hit his head right away and I have to wait til he looks over the second time, right before he's about to charge before I can hit the head hitbox again.

I was just curious if you happen to know exactly where to aim to hit it again right away, instead of having to wait those precious extra seconds. Also, I think I played with you the other day, I'm Big Ben, from the Suburbia game. Well, and the Hospital Horrors game.

That was kind of lame, what really screwed us over there was the guy who killed the last enemy, so we didn't have time to get to the shop and back before everything started spawning. =(

 

[scary ghost]

Also, is there a specific spot there the Scrake's head hitbox goes when he is stunned? When he bends his head down it is in the right spot, but I've noticed when he looks left to right I can't seem to hit his head right away and I have to wait til he looks over the second time, right before he's about to charge before I can hit the head hitbox again.

I was just curious if you happen to know exactly where to aim to hit it again right away, instead of having to wait those precious extra seconds. Also, I think I played with you the other day, I'm Big Ben, from the Suburbia game. Well, and the Hospital Horrors game.

That was kind of lame, what really screwed us over there was the guy who killed the last enemy, so we didn't have time to get to the shop and back before everything started spawning. =(

Don't know about scrake hit boxes. It seems to be different for everyone. Some people shoot a bit down, some to the right, and so on. For me, I tend to aim a bit left with using axe alt fire to stun lock.

Yeah, we were rocking out on the roof until last wave. Ah well, the joy of a pub game, lol.

 

[Big_BenKYS]

I was curious about the Fleshpound frustration mechanics, I was playing with someone who said that dealing damage in any way to the FP will reset the frustration meter, but I didn't think this was true. Can you clear that up for me?

This person was basically pegging an FP with the 9 mill every few seconds as he ran away from it because he believed it reset the 10-15 second timer. I don't think it works that way, though.

Also I am correct in believing that if you are axe kiting an FP and you stay just out of range every time you hit him so that he doesn't swing at you, he will rage after 10 or 15 seconds due to frustration, correct? I have made sure to make him swing at me while axe kiting just to be safe, since I don't want any unnecessary FP rage.