Why is the .44 magnum revolver entity damage base negative 5?

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Topic says it all. I was looking at the pistols and noticed that the revolver and ONLY the revolver has a negative base entity damage. Why? What if I modded it from "-5" to "1"? Does it one-shot everything? Yes, I know I can go try and no, I do not believe it will, I am simply curious. So why is it the only weapon I have seen thus far with a negative entity damage?

 

[bdubyah]

Just for balance I guess. Changing it to 1 would not make it one shot things, it would just do 6 more damage than it currently does. The guns add/subtract damage based on what the ammo sets.

 

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Yeah, I know how it works, it was just surprising to see it take damage away.

 

[seven]

That's not a base damage, it's an add to the base damage (in this case it's negative). The pipe pistol also has a negative base_add (-4). I think all entry level weapons start with a negative add. The .44 magnum is entry level in the .44 weapons. If there were a range of .357 caliber weapons they'd probably start negative too. Why start with negatives, and not just 0 or 1 at the first tier? Don't know, that is an odd choice but maybe there's some reason in the math.

 

[bdubyah]

It's likely to keep balance between tiers of weapons. There has to be a certain amount of gap between them so that once the bits of RNG is added to their stats the higher tier weapon is still clearly better. This used to be different back when a Q6 T2 weapon could potentially be better than a Q1 T3 version of the same weapon, but they changed it after so many complained about the higher tier sometimes being worse.

 

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Gotcha'. And no, they all don't start at a negative value. I was in "items.xml" looking. So far it is the only firearm I found with a negative value. Not sure Dirty Harry would approve, but heck, it still blows head clean off, so...