This section is intended to give detailed reasons behind the selection of default settings for Duelers mod. ## Double and Dual-Blade Sabers The damage caused by two sabers in parallel is the same as the damage caused by one saber. The two blades act as one. However, the dual bladed sabers can score on the front blade and the back blade when spinning. Also, in the orange and purple stance specials, each of the double blades will do damage. In the blue, yellow, and red stances the left hand blade is largely passive and will not do any damage (unless a player runs into you). This situation does give double and dual bladed players an edge. I have noted several areas where double/dualblades have a significant advantage: Strong stance swings. The strong stance swing is has a very long arc. You can actually hit a player twice with the swing. The first hit can happen and the extreme part of the backswing when the back part of the dual saber is actually pointed straight ahead. The downswing can hit again as the front part of the saber chops downward. Yellow overhead special. Spin the special or simply take advantage of the greater chance of keeping a saber lodged in your opponent as they move around you. Note that if your opponent moves into your space you can still do damage to him until the animation is fully completed. With multiple blades you are far better protected! Orange and Purple specials. Heck you can have up to four blades twirling and each one of them can do damage! Dual blades are great for saber throws -- double the opportunity for hitting your opponent! ## Settings for Balanced Fighting All of my fiddling with the mod parameters on the server has been to achieve balanced fighting regardless of the saber configuration. (And I have tried to do the same thing with model scaling). The resulting configuration is perhaps not ideally balanced but I think it is as close as can be obtained while retaining as much fun as possible. The following table shows the JediPlus cvars and the configuration I have chosen
Cvar | Setting
m_sD | 0 (disabled
m_sK | 1 (enabled)
m_sS | 1 (enabled)
m_eS | 0 (disabled)
m_aS | 0 (disabled)
m_nDB | 0 (no nerf)
m_nbs | 2 (same as 1.04)
m_db | 1 (single dual blade)
m_ds | 1 (enabled)
m_bT | 1 (enabled)
### m_sD Turning this one gives a big advantage to large models -- everyone should play Desann. One could argue that small models are hard to hit and while this is true, I find that scaling damage overcompensates considerably and creates a real imbalance between standard size players (e.g. Kyle) and big players (e.g. Desann). Besides, why should a light saber make more damage 'cause it or the player using it is bigger? ### m_sK You can scale the damage of kicks based on character size. Small models can be very very hard to kick even with single click kicking enabled. Enabling large models to really hit small models hard under this circumstance does make sense. ### m_sS When this feature is turned on, the saber size is controlled by the tckmodel.cfg file on the server just like the character sizes. If you use the tckmodel.cfg file that comes with the Duelers mod distribution, the sabers scale with model size except for small models. Models with size under 1.0 are given a 33% boost in saber reach relative to their size (but not more than a scale of 1.0). I find that scaling small characters' sabers exactly with their size strongly limits their ability to use the saber and it becomes very unfair to the folks who like Yoda! ### m_eS This cvar is not well documented, perhaps only in the code! What it does is to enable the extra stances for players with only a single bladed saber. When disabled, players with a single bladed saber will have only the normal three stances (blue/light, yellow/medium, and red/strong). Only a player with a double bladed saber or two single bladed sabers will have the orange and purple stances available. ### m_aS It is fun to use two sabers or two dual bladed sabers all the time! But, it does not provide for balanced play. Two dual bladed sabers give a player a distinct advantage. One can compensate so that when using two sabers or dual bladed sabers, the only stances available are orange and purple. That is, you are restricted to the "Darth Maul" style. This may be overly restrictive and also detracts from some fun, but for the best balance in saber duels it is necessary. ### m_nDB When enabled, this slows down the player speed when attacking. The saber moves just as fast and causes the same damage, but rather the players motion (forward, backward, etc.) is slowed. This is particularly noticeable in the lunge attack. I experimented carefully with this as an alternative to restricting stances. I did not chose it for two reasons: one, the real advantage of dual blades is that you hit more often in spins and you are much more protected from counter attacks during specials; two, the change of timings and distances for many moves screws up your timing when not using a dual bladed saber. ### m_nbs If you are not using the damage control system, this will keep multiple blades from doing multiple damage during backstabs. Since the server is configured to use the damage control system, this setting is redundant (and off to be sure). ### m_db Dual bladed sabers are allowed, but only one of them. Dual blades are not nerfed and do provide a small advantage over other players without dual blades. ### m_ds Two sabers are allowed. Since all stances are enabled, you will be at a small disadvantage to a dual bladed player and you will have a small advantage over a player with only a single blade saber. ### m_bT If you throw your saber at a player at a time when they are not attacking, they can, and probably will, knock your light saber down out of the air. If this happens, your saber will be disabled for a random period of time and you will also be unable to use force powers. Hopefully, this will encourage skilled use of saber throws rather than flagrant saber tossing just to see if you might score a hit.