Discussion Main / DamageDiscrimination

GTA Online zig-zags all over the place with this one, particularly when Passive Mode is involved. A pretty convoluted, but well thought-through system.

- First, friendly fire is turned off in cooperative modes, or members of the same CEO / Motorcycle Club (MC) and that can be turned on/off. Splash damage can explode an ally vehicle (and themselves) but the allies are ejected off the flaming wreckage unharmed. If your vehicle is set on fire (flames coming out of the gas cap), it is a good idea to leave it, specially if you don't know who caused the damage. Shooting is negated, your reticle turns green if an ally is crossing your aim.

- You can't harm a passive player *at first*, but you can speed any vehicle up towards the passive player, *bail out* and then the vehicle can kill the passive player, because it is now considered environmental damage. That includes planes. Yeah, kamikaze attacks with a twist.

- Weaponized vehicles now give you 30 seconds grace before the passive mode expires. In the old days, you could be passive in a weaponized vehicle all day long. There is a reason for that, explained below: Landmines.

- Landmines were particularly wacky with this one. You could drop landmines anywhere on the map without range limit (5 total) WHILE IN PASSIVE MODE. They were not armed, but they could not be shot, exploded, or disabled in any way. As soon as the player left passive mode, they would arm instantly. Griefing doesn't begin to describe it. At first, only explosive landmines were available, a pretty one-dimensional gameplay. Later, oil slicks and EMP mines were added, that don't outright explode other players, but causes them to lose distance in a chase, for example. They all follow these principles, but the 30-second rule still allows they being planted in passive mode.

- Armored vehicles are strange. The Armored Kuruma allows you to shoot at anything from inside *with regular bullets* while negating the return fire. But using FMJ bullets from inside of it towards the outside (purple bullets) and they will break the armored glass of the car, the only thing that can break that glass as per FMJ description. However, if you shoot *from certain angles* it won't break the glass, because you are shooting through the frame. Or at least that's how it worked, and now you can't break your own windows with FMJ bullets shot from inside, subject to verification.

(As a curiosity, all cars have a damage map file saying where the windows and doors are, and that they should allow bullets through or anything. Without that map, every car is impervious to bullets even with the doors broken off. This was verified when the regular unarmored Kuruma became completely impervious to bullets; that also happened to the Sterling GT and the Sasquatch, a vintage sports car that looks like the Mercedes Gull Wing and the arena monster truck vehicle, respectively. The maps were forgotten and for a whole patch, each one of these cars were completely bulletproof in separate occasions, only taking body damage and exploding from their regular armor depletion. Explosives still could terminate any of these cars, according to their armor multipliers as expected, but never able to take the occupants alone. Sniping was impossible on these cars, and now you realize how broken they were.)

Yeah, GTA has a pretty complex system to allow armored cars, passive mode, and friendly fire modes in a single package; no wonder it goes horribly wrong sometimes.

In the online game Continuum (based on the dead game Subspace)you can't shoot allies (bullets and bombs go straight through) BUT the splash damage from explosions can hurt allies (partially subverted?). This results in an entire team sticking to the centre of a base in paranoia incase an ally intentionally shoots the walls if they drift too close. I'm a little hesitant to actually add it since I am not sure the game is listed here (too many tropes containing subspace or continuum).