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AmbientDamage

The damage a sonic wave or a railgun beam deals to everything along its path, as opposed to the damage the shot delivers at the target.

Specification
Applies to
WeaponType
File
rules.ini
Section
[<ObjectType ID>]
Value
integer
When omitted
0

Only two weapon kinds deliver the figure as damage. An IsSonic=yes weapon carries it in the wave that rolls out to the target, and an IsRailgun=yes weapon carries it in the line the beam punches through the world. Both apply it through the weapon’s Warhead= at a measured distance of zero, so the warhead’s falloff never thins it and only its Verses percentage against the victim’s armor applies.

rules.ini
[MySonicGun] ; example WeaponType
Damage=1 ; the wave carries no projectile damage
AmbientDamage=3 ; taken by everything the wave rolls over
IsSonic=yes
Range=6

The wave damages afresh on every frame it covers a cell, so an object the wave lingers over is hit many times before it passes. Wall overlay in a covered cell is worn down by the same figure, and chain reactive overlay standing there is set off. The firing object itself is skipped.

A railgun beam is a single event at the moment of firing: every object whose center lies within [CombatDamage] RailgunDamageRadius of the beam line takes the figure once, as does the object aimed at whether or not the line actually crossed it. A structure in a crossed cell is never measured against that radius and always counts.

The figure is also added to the weapon’s Damage= whenever the engine works out how hard an object hits, which is the average that decides whether an object is treated as a healer and whether it answers fire. A positive ambient figure on a healing weapon can therefore lift that average back above zero and cost the object its healer behavior.