Hey all. Just a quick little guide here going over some of the health regeneration mechanics in the game.
I will preface this with a quick word about netcode. As most of you are aware, the hit detection is 'shooter-side', in that hits detected on the shooter's game are propagated to the person being hit. Health, meanwhile, seems to be 'user-side', in the sense that health is tracked in your game and if it hits 0 on your end, you die. This is why you can shoot someone 3-4 times with a 2-3 shot weapon; it takes a short while for their client to register that they've taken over 100 damage, and then their client has to relay that information back to you.
Damage from Enemy Ink
I first examined ink damage so that I could set up some controlled tests for health regeneration. Since gear in the Dojo is not examinable (at least, it didn't seem to be; I might have just missed it), an ideal test would not use damage from weapons as a basis. As such, I tested how much damage enemy ink deals.
Damage ticks begin the frame you enter enemy ink, and appears to deal damage at a rate of approximately 30hp/s. (for reference, in a 30fps recording, it took about 50 frames for the red border around the screen to stop growing).
Follow-up testing with a variety of weapons puts the health cap at 50 hp. In other words, you will lose hp until you hit 50, and then stay at that number until you either leave or are hit. However, all regeneration is stalled in enemy ink; you MUST leave enemy ink to regenerate. You do not regenerate to 50hp when standing in enemy ink after taking damage.
Health Regeneration
Inklings have 100hp; this limit cannot be increased or decreased (as we know, defence skills directly modify the damage being dealt, not how much health you have).
I tested health regeneration in the following scenarios:
- Standing in enemy ink, then moving to neutral ground
- Standing in enemy ink, then walking to friendly ink (no squid form)
- Standing in enemy ink, then jumping to friendly ink (no squid form)
- Both of the above, with squid form being activated the moment I enter friendly ink
I used the split-screen mode in the Dojo; if there are changes in health regeneration between that and the main multiplayer game, then the following may be incorrect. A few comparisons with my stream recordings indicate that this is not the case, however.
To differentiate between a constant health regeneration rate (i.e. x hp/s) and a 'time to heal' (i.e. 1 second to fully heal, with the same time to heal from 1hp or 99hp), I also ran these tests by taking damage from one shot of a Splattershot.
Regeneration Delay
In all cases, there was a precisely 1-second delay between the last instance of damage and the first tick of regeneration.
Jumping out of enemy ink does begin this delay earlier than normal; the regeneration seems to begin a second after your inkling is visibly in the air, so long as they do not touch enemy ink upon landing.
Regeneration Speed
50hp to 100hp while standing took precisely 4 seconds (120 frames of 30fps footage), indicating either a healing rate of 12.5hp/s or a 4 second time to heal while standing.
50hp to 100hp while submerged in squid form took precisely 0.5 seconds (15 frames of 30fps footage), indicating either a healing rate of 100hp/s or a 0.5 second time to heal while in squid form.
(100 - Splattershot hit) hp to 100hp while in squid form took 0.33... seconds (10 frames of 30fps footage), indicating that the game uses a healing rate and not a heal time.
tl;dr:
- Standing in enemy ink deals approximately 30dps to you, and will not drop you below 50hp.
- As long as you aren't in enemy ink, taking no damage for precisely 1 second will trigger regeneration. It does not matter which form you are in during this time.
- Regeneration in kid form heals you for 12.5hp/s.
- Regeneration in squid form inside friendly ink heals you for 100hp/s.
(for reference, shooters such as Call of Duty use a heal time instead of a healing rate).
Implications
Basically, if you don't take damage for a second and you're in squid form, you're back to full health virtually instantly. If you are taking any sort of damage, use squid form liberally until you clean the jam off your screen.
The important thing is that any instance of damage will reset the countdown before regeneration. If you touch a pixel of enemy ink, or if you take another 5 damage from that speck of paint that Dynamo threw at you, that's another second on the regen timer.
This is part of the reason why rollers seem to have more range than they should; you may have taken ~40 damage and not regenerated for whatever reason, and then you took ~60 damage from the roller and died. The actual oneshot range for rollers, even with lag, is actually quite a short distance.
Regarding Netcode
Now, the reason I prefaced this post with a few words on netcode: netcode is a major factor in this. Since each player's health is determined by their own game client, they can begin regenerating health a second after their client registers that they have taken damage, which is MORE THAN a second after the other player damages you on their screen.
However, this is balanced out by the fact that you can regenerate health between the time the other player registers a hit and the time your client receives this data.
In normal network conditions, this is zero-sum; a second between shots on your end is still a second between shots on the other guy's end, it's just offset by half your ping to the other guy.
As a conjecture: in unstable network conditions, this can cause problems.
Player A registers a hit on Player B for 30 damage
-------------------------------------------------------> Player B registers damage and adjusts hp value.
--------------------------------------------------------- Player B drops packets for a little over a second.
--------------------------------------------------------- During this time, Player B is in squid form in
--------------------------------------------------------- their own ink and fully regenerates
Player A registered 3 more hits on Player B
during this lag spike for 90 damage
-------------------------------------------------------> Player B registers damage, but they're at 100hp
--------------------------------------------------------- again, so they survive and escape
... unless the netcode has some sort of lag handler, which, considering my experience with the game, I don't think it does. But, as I said, this is conjecture; it might not be true, but it would certainly explain a lot.
I will preface this with a quick word about netcode. As most of you are aware, the hit detection is 'shooter-side', in that hits detected on the shooter's game are propagated to the person being hit. Health, meanwhile, seems to be 'user-side', in the sense that health is tracked in your game and if it hits 0 on your end, you die. This is why you can shoot someone 3-4 times with a 2-3 shot weapon; it takes a short while for their client to register that they've taken over 100 damage, and then their client has to relay that information back to you.
Damage from Enemy Ink
I first examined ink damage so that I could set up some controlled tests for health regeneration. Since gear in the Dojo is not examinable (at least, it didn't seem to be; I might have just missed it), an ideal test would not use damage from weapons as a basis. As such, I tested how much damage enemy ink deals.
Damage ticks begin the frame you enter enemy ink, and appears to deal damage at a rate of approximately 30hp/s. (for reference, in a 30fps recording, it took about 50 frames for the red border around the screen to stop growing).
Follow-up testing with a variety of weapons puts the health cap at 50 hp. In other words, you will lose hp until you hit 50, and then stay at that number until you either leave or are hit. However, all regeneration is stalled in enemy ink; you MUST leave enemy ink to regenerate. You do not regenerate to 50hp when standing in enemy ink after taking damage.
Health Regeneration
Inklings have 100hp; this limit cannot be increased or decreased (as we know, defence skills directly modify the damage being dealt, not how much health you have).
I tested health regeneration in the following scenarios:
- Standing in enemy ink, then moving to neutral ground
- Standing in enemy ink, then walking to friendly ink (no squid form)
- Standing in enemy ink, then jumping to friendly ink (no squid form)
- Both of the above, with squid form being activated the moment I enter friendly ink
I used the split-screen mode in the Dojo; if there are changes in health regeneration between that and the main multiplayer game, then the following may be incorrect. A few comparisons with my stream recordings indicate that this is not the case, however.
To differentiate between a constant health regeneration rate (i.e. x hp/s) and a 'time to heal' (i.e. 1 second to fully heal, with the same time to heal from 1hp or 99hp), I also ran these tests by taking damage from one shot of a Splattershot.
Regeneration Delay
In all cases, there was a precisely 1-second delay between the last instance of damage and the first tick of regeneration.
Jumping out of enemy ink does begin this delay earlier than normal; the regeneration seems to begin a second after your inkling is visibly in the air, so long as they do not touch enemy ink upon landing.
Regeneration Speed
50hp to 100hp while standing took precisely 4 seconds (120 frames of 30fps footage), indicating either a healing rate of 12.5hp/s or a 4 second time to heal while standing.
50hp to 100hp while submerged in squid form took precisely 0.5 seconds (15 frames of 30fps footage), indicating either a healing rate of 100hp/s or a 0.5 second time to heal while in squid form.
(100 - Splattershot hit) hp to 100hp while in squid form took 0.33... seconds (10 frames of 30fps footage), indicating that the game uses a healing rate and not a heal time.
tl;dr:
- Standing in enemy ink deals approximately 30dps to you, and will not drop you below 50hp.
- As long as you aren't in enemy ink, taking no damage for precisely 1 second will trigger regeneration. It does not matter which form you are in during this time.
- Regeneration in kid form heals you for 12.5hp/s.
- Regeneration in squid form inside friendly ink heals you for 100hp/s.
(for reference, shooters such as Call of Duty use a heal time instead of a healing rate).
Implications
Basically, if you don't take damage for a second and you're in squid form, you're back to full health virtually instantly. If you are taking any sort of damage, use squid form liberally until you clean the jam off your screen.
The important thing is that any instance of damage will reset the countdown before regeneration. If you touch a pixel of enemy ink, or if you take another 5 damage from that speck of paint that Dynamo threw at you, that's another second on the regen timer.
This is part of the reason why rollers seem to have more range than they should; you may have taken ~40 damage and not regenerated for whatever reason, and then you took ~60 damage from the roller and died. The actual oneshot range for rollers, even with lag, is actually quite a short distance.
Regarding Netcode
Now, the reason I prefaced this post with a few words on netcode: netcode is a major factor in this. Since each player's health is determined by their own game client, they can begin regenerating health a second after their client registers that they have taken damage, which is MORE THAN a second after the other player damages you on their screen.
However, this is balanced out by the fact that you can regenerate health between the time the other player registers a hit and the time your client receives this data.
In normal network conditions, this is zero-sum; a second between shots on your end is still a second between shots on the other guy's end, it's just offset by half your ping to the other guy.
As a conjecture: in unstable network conditions, this can cause problems.
Player A registers a hit on Player B for 30 damage
-------------------------------------------------------> Player B registers damage and adjusts hp value.
--------------------------------------------------------- Player B drops packets for a little over a second.
--------------------------------------------------------- During this time, Player B is in squid form in
--------------------------------------------------------- their own ink and fully regenerates
Player A registered 3 more hits on Player B
during this lag spike for 90 damage
-------------------------------------------------------> Player B registers damage, but they're at 100hp
--------------------------------------------------------- again, so they survive and escape
... unless the netcode has some sort of lag handler, which, considering my experience with the game, I don't think it does. But, as I said, this is conjecture; it might not be true, but it would certainly explain a lot.
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