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The Armor Project [updated August 30]

theEffinBear

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jun 16, 2008
Messages
88
Location
North East
[size=+2]
.The Armor Project.
[/size]

.EDIT: I have been updating this post with more details as I find them. Annotated, corrected, and additional info that I have edited in is in this this red-on-black text style, to make clear what is new. I have also changed the name of the topic itself to "The Armor Project"..

.July 23rd: I have completed testing Kirby's Stone Armor. It breaks when it is dealt at least 30% damage (taking Stale Moves into account), all the excess damage from the hitbox that actually broke it disappears, and Kirby takes the knockback (but not the damage) from that hit. Attacking Kirby while he's in his Stone form will Stale the attack, regardless of whether you break the Armor or not. See my [post=4976920]Stone Armor post[/post] below for details on how I tested this..

.August 30th: After a month-long pause, I have tested Yoshi's Jump Armor! It functions against knockback, not damage, which is different from Cypher Armor and Stone Armor. If the attack deals more than 3854±3 units of knockback (based on the move used, how Stale it is, Yoshi's current percentage, and Yoshi's weight), Yoshi's double-jump will be interrupted and he will be sent flying. If the attack deals less than that amount, Yoshi's Jump Armor lets him power straight through the attack, uninterrupted. These knockback values are accessible through the "max launch speed" in the post-Brawl stats, where they are listed in "mph" (unfortunately much less convenient than the damage-based Armors). For testing details and results, see my [post=5253672]Jump Armor post[/post] below..

Snake, Kirby, Yoshi,
.Squirtle (sort of), and Zero-Suit Samus (possibly).
all have varying degrees of knockback-ignoring moves (Cypher, Stone, double jump,
.Withdraw, and down-smash.
), but many explanations for how/why/when this happens are contradictory or aren't correct in EVERY situation. So I decided to find out for myself: this topic will be about every knockback-ignoring move that is not Super Armor, starting with Snake's Cypher Armor, but later expanding to include Kirby and hopefully Yoshi too, which is why I have placed it in the Brawl Tactical Discussion forum and not the Snake forum (though I'm linking from there to here); if I have forgetten other non-Super Armor moves, or if more are discovered, then the topic will include them as well.

I think this is information is new, as I have looked through all the threads that seemed relevant on the Snake forums and on the Tactical forums within the first few pages, I have performed some searches, and come up blank for "when EXACTLY will a move interrupt the Cypher?", though the closest thread I found was Snake's up-B - Acts like super armor? back in April. If someone else has completely figured this out before, then sorry: the information was buried deeper than my reasonable effort was able to uncover. Anyway!

Onwards to SCIENCE.

Everyone knows that Snake can be hard to hit off the Cypher: sometimes you hit him and he just powers through it, like Super Armor. Most single-hit moves do break through this Cypher Armor: Kirby's f-tilt always launches him, 7 or 8% the worse for wear, for example, but most multi-hit moves fail to affect his recovery. But then I noticed that Charizard's b-air, a 2-hit move, breaks him out on the second hit. And then I tried Snake's own d-air and n-air on him, and the last hit of both 4-hit moves broke through the Cypher Armor. So I've heard some people say that each move in the game is has a TRUE or FALSE flag marking "INTERRUPTS_CYPHER". But Lucario at 200% will break through the Cypher Armor with either of the hits on his 2-hit d-air, while Lucario's d-air at 0% can only deal damage to a Cypher'ing Snake, no knockback. And the initial hit of Squirtle's n-air deals 12% and interrupts the Cypher, but hitting slightly later deals 6% and doesn't interrupt. Why these inconsistencies and differences?

Turns out, there's one single condition for whether an attack will break through the Cypher Armor: if Snake takes
.MORE THAN 7%.
damage from a single hitbox, he actually takes the knockback instead of ignoring it. The individual hitboxes on multi-hit moves usually don't
.exceed.
that 7% threshold, so their knockback is ignored. On the flipside, most single hit moves DO
.exceed.
the 7% threshold, and so they will knock him off the Cypher. I am pretty confident about most of this, having just tested it fairly extensively; my caveats are 1) I don't know how/if move decay counts in this, as 2) I did this all in Training Mode (it would be a major downer to try setting all the percentages so exactly during a Brawl instead of Training).

Method:
0) choose Snake in training mode with Lucario as your CPU opponent.
1) Use up-B and have Lucario hit you with his d-air, noting the damage taken from each hit and whether either knocked you off the Cypher.
3) Spawn a Maxim Tomato and eat it. Have Lucario hit you with his u-tilt, noting the same things.
4) Spawn another Maxim Tomato and eat it ("Tasty!") and increase Lucario's damage by 10%.
5) Repeat from step 1.
6) When you find that one of these moves knocks you off the Cypher, start narrowing down to the exact percentage that Lucario is powerful enough to knock you off (I didn't test the u-tilt while doing this for the d-air, hence the gap in that column).
7) Test to make sure that a 6% attack doesn't break the Cypher Armor when Snake is very damaged.
8) After all this, switch to Lucario with Snake as the CPU, and make sure the results hold in a second trial with Snake at 999%.

I chose Lucario because his Aura ability provides a very handy way to slowly pump up a single move, testing it with different damage. I chose the d-air and the u-tilt because they start out too weak to interrupt the Cypher, because they're both fast enough that it's relatively easy to test this at 1/2 speed in Training mode while using two controllers, and because the d-air is a multi-hit move.

The table below is the summary of my findings, where "doesn't interrupt" is in blue and "does interrupt" is in red; Lucario's percentages in green are when I was narrowing down in step 6 from above (so they're not in nice even 10% increments).
Code:
Lucario	d-air	u-tilt
  0%	[color=#8888ff]5*2=11	4[/color]
 10%	[color=#8888ff]5*2=11	4[/color]
 20%	[color=#8888ff]5*2=11	4[/color]
 30%	[color=#8888ff]6*2=12	4[/color]
 40%	[color=#8888ff]6*2=12	4[/color]
 50%	[color=#8888ff]6*2=13	5[/color]
 [color=#00ff00]51%[/color]	[color=#8888ff]6*2=13[/color]
 [color=#00ff00]52%[/color]	[color=#8888ff]6*2=13[/color]
 [color=#00ff00]53%[/color]	[color=#cc4444]7*2=14[/color]
 [color=#00ff00]55%[/color]	[color=#cc4444]7*2=14[/color]
 60%	[color=#cc4444]7*2=14[/color]	[color=#8888ff]5[/color]
 70%	[color=#cc4444]7*2=15[/color]	[color=#8888ff]5[/color]
 80%	[color=#cc4444]8*2=16[/color]	[color=#8888ff]6[/color]
 90%		[color=#8888ff]6[/color]
100%		[color=#8888ff]6[/color]
110%		[color=#8888ff]6[/color]
[color=#00ff00]113%[/color]		[color=#8888ff]6[/color]
[color=#00ff00]114%[/color]		[color=#8888ff]6[/color]
[color=#00ff00]115%[/color]		[color=#cc4444]7[/color]
120%		[color=#cc4444]7[/color]
So Lucario's d-air at 50% does 13% in two hits, neither of which knock you off the Cypher (the first hit does 6% by itself, and if you intentionally miss with the first hit, the second hit does 6% by itself as well); Lucario's d-air at 60% does 14% in two hits and does knock off (both dealing 7% individually), and both of the hits knock you off the Cypher. So test the halfway point, 55%, which deals 7+7=14%, still knocking you off. Halving and truncating the difference yields 52%, which deals 6+6=13%, and doesn't knock you off. Test 53%, which deals 7+7=14%, and does knock you off. So, 53% is the critical point, when both hits of his d-air do 7%
.actually slightly more than 7+fraction%, but I haven't tested enough to know what the fraction is.
, and both can knock you off of the Cypher.

The same thing happens with the u-tilt, except that 114% deals 6% and doesn't interrupt the Cypher, but at 115% the u-tilt deals 7%
.actually 7.01%.
and does interrupt the Cypher.

RESULTS:
• As stated above, if an individual hitbox deals
.exactly 7% or less.
damage, the Cypher ignores the knockback. If an individual hitbox deals
.more than 7%.
damage, the Cypher will be interrupted.
• Knockback has no direct effect on whether a hit will break the Cypher Armor, only the indirect correlation effect that more knockback usually means more damage on an individual hitbox.
• Training mode doesn't just ignore fractions of a percent, or else Lucario's d-air at 0% couldn't deal 11% total, as each hit only registers as 5%.
• There's no "INTERRUPTS_CYPHER" flag for each and every single attack in the game.
• Both hits of Lucario's d-air deal exact same amount of damage.
• The knockback immunities of Snake's Cypher, Yoshi's double jump, and Kirby's Stone are all different (unique?) mechanics.

FURTHER STUDY REQUIRED:
• This was done in Training Mode, and it's possible that there are some differences between Training Mode and actual Brawls. Hopefully, the only difference between Training and Brawls are 1) the known lack of Move Decay in Training, and 2) that the display (ONLY the display) truncates your % in Training and rounds it in multiplayer, or something along these lines.
• I don't know whether or how Move Decay interacts with Cypher Armor (I didn't think to test it out before I turned everything off). My GUESS is that if you're Lucario at 115% and you stale your u-tilt at all, it won't break the Cypher Armor. The more-complex alternative is that Cypher Armor doesn't take stale moves into account (so a semi-stale u-tilt at 115% would deal 6%, say, but would still break the Cypher Armor because the FRESH u-tilt WOULD HAVE DEALT
.7.01%.
), which is awkward. For Occam's sake, I hope my guess is correct: Lucario's damage-powered Aura seems to be almost the same mechanic as Stale Moves but in reverse, and it would be very strange for the Cypher Armor to take Aura into account but ignore Stale Moves.
.The Cypher Armor reacts to damage after taking Stale Moves into account; see [post=4933987]this post[/post] for details..
• Does Snake have this Cypher Armor for every frame that he's holding onto the Cypher? Does the Cypher Armor end as soon as you regain your ability to airdodge, attack, etc?

So, Dear Readers, this is where I turn to you: does anyone have the patience to check out my three points of Further Study?
• Use the Handicap function to set Lucario at various percentages and test some moves on the Cypher when out of Training Mode: Lucario's 52%-d-air and 114%-u-tilt shouldn't break the Cypher Armor, but both should at 53% and 115%, respectively, if my theory is correct.
• Use the Handicap function to set Lucario to 115% and fight a non-moving Snake on a stage with destructible walls, etc. Stale your u-tilt once by hitting the one of the destructible doodads, and then see if it breaks the Cypher Armor, and how much damage it did (ideally it should do 6% and not break the armor). Repeat the whole thing, increasing Lucario's handicap percent by 1 each time, until the once-staled u-tilt again breaks the Cypher Armor (it should do 7% again as soon as it succeeds in interrupting the Cypher).
.Since the handicap function has a resolution of 10%, I was slightly more creative in testing this. The Cypher Armor does take Stale Moves into account before reacting to damage (breaking for more than 7% damage like usual), as stated in the above edit; continue to see [post=4933987]this post[/post] for details..
• Just test to see if the Cypher Armor applies during the whole Cypher, or if the first few frames are actually Super Armor, or if it the Cypher Armor ends before Snake lets go, etc. My impression is that it's Cypher Armor the whole time, with no actual Super Armor, but I'd like some actual data here.

When you're recording the amount of damage dealt, remember that Snake should have started from 0%, or else you're adding hidden fractions which could mess up the percents you write down (so set items on High, Maxim Tomatoes only, or have Snake commit suicide each time).

Is anyone willing to help me out?

Next up, I think I've figured out how Kirby's Stone Armor works, too, but I'll leave that for a subsequent post (it's not quite as pressing an issue as Snake's Cypher Armor, because the thought "I need to break Kirby's Stone!" doesn't happen quite as often as "I need to interrupt/gimp Snake's recovery!"). I don't know how Yoshi's Jump Armor works, and since the best/most efficient method I can think of to try testing it (using the "fastest launch speed" from the post-Brawl stats, as I don't THINK that the Jump Armor takes damage into account directly) would require all sorts of switches between modes. If anyone has any ideas, or wants to spearhead the Yoshi stuff, please feel more than free. Share and Enjoy.
Note: SmashWiki's explanation for Yoshi's Jump Armor is that he reacts to knockback while double jumping as if his percentage is 120 lower than it displays, and if the resulting calculation is negative, he takes no knockback from that hit. As the same page lists the Cypher as gaining this same exact type of "hit resistance", I would prefer to do reproducible tests with hard data.

Hopefully this is useful to all of you.
/RtEB
 

Scala

Smash Ace
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I really like this train of thought and you really took a clever approach to determining out the exact percent lucario will hit snake off of the cypher. Some interesting points that I want to bring up is that I've used dair spikes with multiple characters against the cypher so is it possible that only attacks with non-vertical knockback can hit him off the cypher?

As for yoshi I remember some people in the forums said that his double jump can go through every attack except for Ganon's dair. Whether that's true or not I leave up to you and everyone else :)
 

3xSwords

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I know kirby's stone is broken by a number 9 hammer by G&W.

Don't know if its because of damage dealt or just that 9 hammer is insane.

hope that helps
 

psykoplympton

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Messages
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once kirbys rock takes enough damage it will break like any shield exept without the dazed effect afterwards. snakes cypher is super armor and so is yoshis double jump. yoshis jump can also take too much damage and not work just like in melee, it can be stoped by a powerful attack or being at high percents
 

DarkStraw

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Messages
179
i always thought snakes super armor just worked at the start of the cypher, as in it dosent last the entire time he's on the cypher, i find its pretty easy to knock him out of it near the end.
 

AmigoOne

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Joined
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Messages
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Try Metaknights Uair, does it do more than 7%? I remember playing against a snake and hacking away all day on his cypher with uair.
 

theEffinBear

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My less-tested findings for Kirby's Stone Armor say it's broken as soon as it takes a total of 30% damage. The hitbox that actually brings the total to 30% still deals no damage to Kirby himself, but does do knockback (against this hitbox only, Kirby has the opposite of Super Armor: he takes no damage but does receive knockback). So a 0% Stoned Kirby will remain at 0% even while dying from Marth's Final Smash; Ganondorf's neutral-B, the Murder Fist, deals 32% damage normally, which will break through the Stone Armor all by its lonesome. I plan to test this further at some point over the next few days.
Try Metaknights Uair, does it do more than 7%? I remember playing against a snake and hacking away all day on his cypher with uair.
The Meta Knight guide says that his u-air does 6%, so no, MK's u-air will never break the Cypher Armor, even when fresh. Neither will his f-air and b-air, which both do 3-3-4%. The d-air deals 9% and n-air deals 12% (initial hit) or 7% (late hit), so they will always break the Cypher Armor when fresh. (Here I'm assuming that actual-damage-applied-after-Stale-Moves is the in fact how that Cypher Armor works -- I have not yet tested this.)

And by the way, I re-found Doval's post from April 25 on the Super Armor thread, which was where I got the idea "Cypher has Armor against multi-hit moves"; this led me to do more extensive testing when I found that Charizard's b-air broke the Cypher Armor with its second hit.

/RtEB
 

~ Gheb ~

Life is just a party
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This is quite good to know, if you want to grab Snake when he's recovering. I suppose you can knock him in a
nice position and attempt to grab him
 

theEffinBear

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Gheb_01: if you interrupt the Cypher, Snake gets to use it again. I suppose you could try to hit him with an aerial such that, when he uses his Cypher again, you can grab-release him to force him to C4-save or die -- is that what you were suggesting? Seems hard to plan, but I guess not infeasible.

It turns out I was slightly wrong (though in a way that's fairly important) about the threshold to break the Cypher Armor. It's not "any hitbox that deals 7% or more" to break the Cypher Armor, but rather "any hitbox that deals more than 7% (not including exactly 7.000...%)". So an attack that deals 7.01% damage, like Lucario's u-tilt at 115%, will break the Cypher Armor, but an attack that deals exactly 7%, like Meta-Knight's non-sweetspot d-air, will not. I knew that the Aura would probably make Lucario deal in fractions of a percent but didn't realize this would be significant (nor did I realize that his 0% u-tilt didn't deal integer damage). I'll be updating the OP with this new information too.

To test my new hypothesis, I started looking through every character and record all the hitboxes that deal either exactly 7% damage or 8% damage, but I got tired and stopped after Link. None of the 7% damage hitboxes break the Cypher Armor (with one exception in green, explained at the end), while all of the 8% damage hitboxes do.

_Mario:_
7% b-air (late), d-air (last), u-tilt
8% f-tilt.
_Luigi:_
8% b-air (late), sub-100% ledge attack.
_Peach:_
7% b-air (late)
8% u-smash (far)
_Bowser:_
8% sub-100% ledge getup attack.
_Donkey Kong:_
8% d-tilt, sub-100% ledge attack.
_Diddy Kong:_
7% d-tilt, u-tilt
8% sub-100% ledge attack.
_Yoshi:_
8% up-B (splash damage only; the direct hit causes an extra 1% damage).
_Wario:_
7% f-air (initial)
8% d-tilt, both bike wheels (tilt throw), sub-100% ledge attack.
_Link:_
7% b-air (second hit), bomb (tilt throw), forward-B (near), up-B (grounded, third swing)
8% bomb (smash throw), sub-100% ledge attack.

The data below from Training Mode shows the problem with my Lucario tests: while setting Lucario's damage to any integer% provides very nice control, it isn't quite fine-grained enough. I tried doing Lucario's u-tilt 100 times each, at both 0% and 115%, and then comparing the results with Mario's u-tilt and Zelda's d-tilt (neither of which break the Cypher Armor):
Code:
[b]#hits	at 0%  at 115%	Mario	Zelda[/b]
   1	  4%	  7%	  7%	  7%
  10	 42%	 70%	 70%	 70%
  20	 83%	140%	140%	140%
  30	125%	210%	210%	210%
  40	167%	280%	280%	280%
  50	209%	350%	350%	350%
  60	251%	420%	420%	420%
  70	294%	490%	490%	490%
  80	336%	560%	560%	560%
  90	378%	630%	630%	630%
 100	420%	[b][color=#22dd22]701[/color][/b]%	700%	700%
You can tell that Lucario's 0% u-tilt doesn't deal exactly 4% fairly quickly: if you repeatedly hit a single opponent starting at 0% with it, their percentage will go 4,8,12,16,21%. The first time Lucario's 115% u-tilt shows that it deals slightly more than 7% is on hit number 100 exactly; the first 99 hits all appear to deal exactly 7%.

I had been assuming that most base damages are integers... now I'm just hoping that Lucario is one of two exception, with his 0%-u-tilt that deals ~4.20%; Mario and Zelda's data there gives me some confidence* that Lucario is an exception.
*Of course, I was very confident that the breaking threshold included 7%, and see where that got me.

The other surprise/exception was that Link's tilt-thrown bomb deals 7%, according to the display, but still breaks the Cypher Armor. But if you hit Snake with 3 tilt-thrown bombs, his percent meter now reads 22%. A tilt-thrown bomb must therefore deal at least 7+(1/3)% damage (though less than 7+(2/3)%). My guess is that throwing items, (Link's bombs, Diddy's bananas, Snake's grenades, Peach's turnips, etc) have a base damage which is multiplied by some factor based on how they were thrown, probably "dropped", "tilt throw" and "smash throw".

Anyone up for trying the "further studies required" I mentioned?
/RtEB
 

¯\_S.(ツ).L.I.D._/¯

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Nice job, and my approach against snake with Marth is to Fair him or Fsmash him. these always knock him off. The thing that I hate about his cypher is if you knock him off he gets it back which is super cheap! Most characters can't recover again after they are knocked out of their recovery, but not Snake, no he just has to be broken... Gosh he gets annoying...
 

theEffinBear

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this would be a good post for the Lucario boards too
It seems that the Lucario boards have already figured out that his u-tilt's base damage isn't an integer (it would've been a good idea to check BEFOREhand); the only thing I could add is that the Aura multiplier for the u-tilt must have its cap at a little over 170%, assuming the Aura multiplier is linear with damage (at least in Training mode). If the multiplier = 1+(L%/cap), then 4.2*(1+L%/cap) = 7.01, and solving for the cap gives 171.886121%. The listed cap is 170%, and I don't think I'm going to start a topic for a 1% correction.

HOWEVER! I have created a topic on the [thread=182754]Gale Boomerang vs the Cypher[/thread] (the wind effect pushes Snake away, even though the direct hit doesn't deal any "knockback"), because I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else.

Hopefully we'll get other discoveries out of this Non-Super Armor project. Most of 'em will be small, but maybe there will be a big one or two as well.

/RtEB
 

theEffinBear

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I have just tested Stale Moves vs Cypher Armor. Turns out: yes, Cypher Armor only reacts to the actual damage dealt.

Unfortunately, the handicap function only lets you set to the nearest 10%; fortunately, the second hit of Snake's n-air deals exactly 5% damage (or rather, it deals at least 5% but less than 5.01%; 100 hits of this second hitbox deal a total of exactly 500% in training mode), so I handicapped a Lucario to 110%, hit him with the second hit of Snake's n-air to get him to exactly 115%, and then tested Lucario's u-air versus Cypher Armor.

Result: the first u-tilt dealt about 7% damage (my previous findings say "7.01%"), and interrupted the Cypher. Snake then ate some nearby food to get him back to 0%, and I tried again: the second u-tilt dealt 6% and did not interrupt the Cypher.

I will edit this minor finding into the OP.
/RtEB
 

omegawhitemage

BRoomer
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Good info, the only possibly problem is that some things in training mode differ from the way they are in actual Brawls. IDK if anyone has brought this up yet, but it could be a major problem in your findings.
 

theEffinBear

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I have not done extensive tests to make sure that my findings are consistent between Training mode and regular Brawls, but at least some moves are: see my previous post, [post]#19[/post] above, which has shown that Stale Moves will stop Lucario's 115%-u-tilt from breaking the Cypher Armor (dealing ~7.01% the first use and breaking the Armor, and something just less than 6% on the second use and not breaking the Armor). I have taken your point into consideration as a possible flaw in my wall-of-text OP, at the end, too, and I plan to do more extensive tests to make sure that my Training mode findings are valid for multiplayer Brawls.

Of course, if YOU'RE willing to do some testing, I'd love to see the data and results :)
I want to make sure everything is as open, accurately-described, and reproducible* as possible, and I am grateful to the people who have said "I just tested this". Seriously, I would love it if people wanted to double check my figures and test to see if, where, and how the results differ. A joint effort by the Tactical forum-goers would be fantastic, but I haven't been trying to recruit very hard as I'd prefer not being an annoyance.
*yes, I really do want this to be science/Science. And since the only barriers for entry are "access to this forum" and "a copy of Brawl and at least two controllers", the results are eminently more reproducible than touchy physical science experiments that require massive funding to set up in the first place.

I'll be testing Kirby's Stone Armor soon-ish. ALSO, I forgot about Squirtle's forward-B. It seems fairly simple but may have hidden complexity.

ACH! MEINE WISSENSCHAFT!
/RtEB
p.s. Thanks though!
 

ph00tbag

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Another "Super Armor"-like state is that of the stun from Zamus' Dsmash. This stun is first of all on a timer that is damage dependent, but some moves that can break the stun at low percents stop breaking the stun at higher percents. This would be an interesting thing to test.
 

Yuna

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Another "Super Armor"-like state is that of the stun from Zamus' Dsmash. This stun is first of all on a timer that is damage dependent, but some moves that can break the stun at low percents stop breaking the stun at higher percents. This would be an interesting thing to test.
No, that's just special stun and stun animations.
 

omegawhitemage

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I'd love to help with things, but I don't even own a Wii or the game. So I can't really be too much help.
 

ph00tbag

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No, that's just special stun and stun animations.
I never said it was super armor. I said it was like super armor, as in it exhibited properties similar to super armor. For instance, at 13%, a stunned opponent does not experience knockback from a jab, but will be knocked back by an ftilt. However, at somewhere upwards of 150% percent, you can ftilt the person again and they'll just sit there.

You can be a cold-and-prickly about this, but it's more than just "special stun and stun animations," so either keep your bellyaching to yourself or go be a self-important prick somewhere where it'll do some good (the Infinite Dimensional Cape thread would be a depressing read if not for your posts).
 

PK Hexagon

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You can be a cold-and-prickly about this, but it's more than just "special stun and stun animations," so either keep your bellyaching to yourself or go be a self-important prick somewhere where it'll do some good (the Infinite Dimensional Cape thread would be a depressing read if not for your posts).
....A bit overboard.
 

theEffinBear

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ph00tbag and Yuna: both of you have good points on Zamus's neutral-B and d-smash. Occasionally you are hit hard enough that you would die off the side, but a weaker attack then hits and saves you -- but sometimes the weaker attack seems to be ignored entirely, and you take the damage but ignore the knockback and die anyway. This may be no more than the regular Brawl physics at work. I could imagine that Zamus's stungun were coded simply as a huge amount of hitlag (with the special "ouch I'm stunned" oscillating animation) followed by weak knockback, but the regular rules for whether a hitbox will override someone's current knockback/trajectory still apply (and if these rules apply as far back as the hitlag). Even if this is normal Brawl physics with a strange combination of high hitlag and low knockback, it is still a case where an attack's knockback is ignored for something other than straight-up Super Armor or invincibility frames, and hence testing it is the aim of this project! When will a hit override someone's current trajectory?

A just-made-up, totally unfounded hypothesis: if we treat knockback as a speed (determined by base power of the attack, how stale it is, and the target's percentage after being hit), then the second attack's knockback will override a character's current trajectory if the second attack's would-be speed is at least 0<x<1 times the character's current speed.

It may be feasible to test this hypothesis using a custom stage with spikes (for their fixed knockback) and the "fastest launched speed" in the post-Brawl stats. Alternatively, check to see if/when Wolf's blaster stops interrupting someone's trajectory. The exact setups for these possible tests, however... I don't really want to think about it right now. I'm still planning to test the nice simplicity (I think) of Kirby's Stone Armor and Squirtle's Withdraw Armor next.

OWM: well shucks, I didn't know you didn't have a Wii or Das Brawl. Thanks for the support anyway!

/RtEB
"cold and prickly" is a funny phrase. As is "well shucks".
 

ph00tbag

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I could imagine that Zamus's stungun were coded simply as a huge amount of hitlag (with the special "ouch I'm stunned" oscillating animation) followed by weak knockback, but the regular rules for whether a hitbox will override someone's current knockback/trajectory still apply (and if these rules apply as far back as the hitlag).
I used to think the stun was hitlag, but then I tried SDI'ing it, and found it can't be SDI'd, which would be possible if it were hitlag. I thus concluded that Zamus' dsmash stun is a state specific to her stun-gun.

Although the rest of your idea seems to do well at describing the situation. I'll have to check that out. I have the knockback speeds for each of ZSS' moves, so I'll have to chart out the low ones next to dsmash's knockback and see what happens.

I also have to rescind my previous statement about ftilt not interrupting dsmash. I must have been hallucinating or something, because I thought I saw it happen at one point.
 

theEffinBear

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I used to think the stun was hitlag, but then I tried SDI'ing it, and found it can't be SDI'd, which would be possible if it were hitlag. I thus concluded that Zamus' dsmash stun is a state specific to her stun-gun.

Although the rest of your idea seems to do well at describing the situation. I'll have to check that out. I have the knockback speeds for each of ZSS' moves, so I'll have to chart out the low ones next to dsmash's knockback and see what happens.

I also have to rescind my previous statement about ftilt not interrupting dsmash. I must have been hallucinating or something, because I thought I saw it happen at one point.
I've tried to SDI during the stun and been likewise unsuccessful, though I'd forgotten. Please do test things and report your results! That knockback chart for Zamus's moves sounds like it could be quite useful (and do you have a link to it?).

/RtEB
 

theEffinBear

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[size="+2"]All about Kirby's Stone Armor[/size]

Stone Armor breaks when it absorbs a total of 30% damage. Kirby takes the knockback of the hitbox that actually broke it, but still doesn't take the damage. The Meta Knight tests were done in Training mode, so there's no Stale Moves; in a regular Brawl, none of these sequences of moves would break the Stone Armor, as the repeated attacks will become Stale (see the Ganondorf part below for details). I performed each sequence of attacks on Kirby not using Stone to record the percentage totals. I repeated this on a Kirby using Stone and noted when the Stone Armor broke. The same colors are used here as in the first post: blue means Kirby was Armored through this attack, and red means the Stone Armor was broken by this attack.

Code:
[b]Meta Knight vs Stone Armor[/b] [color=#888888](damages are cumulative)[/color]
[color=#00ff00]  Test 1	    Test 2	   Test 3[/color]
start	[color=#8888ff] 0[/color]	start	   [color=#8888ff] 0[/color]	start	  [color=#8888ff] 0[/color]
u-air	[color=#8888ff] 6[/color]	u-air	   [color=#8888ff] 6[/color]	d-tilt	  [color=#8888ff] 5[/color]
u-air	[color=#8888ff]12[/color]	u-air	   [color=#8888ff]12[/color]	d-tilt	  [color=#8888ff]10[/color]
u-air	[color=#8888ff]18[/color]	u-air	   [color=#8888ff]18[/color]	d-tilt	  [color=#8888ff]15[/color]
u-air	[color=#8888ff]24[/color]	u-air	   [color=#8888ff]24[/color]	d-tilt	  [color=#8888ff]20[/color]
u-air	[color=#cc4444]30[/color]	u-smash.1  [color=#8888ff]27[/color]	d-tilt	  [color=#8888ff]25[/color]
		u-smash.2  [color=#8888ff]29[/color]	f-tilt.1  [color=#8888ff]29[/color]
		u-smash.3  [color=#cc4444]33[/color]	anything  [color=#cc4444]30+[/color]

[color=#888888]("u-smash.1"/"f-tilt.1" = 1st hitbox of u-smash/f-tilt.)[/color]
Then I tested it out in multiplayer Brawl. First I had Ganondorf repeatedly neutral-B Kirby, to record how much damage it dealt. I had items on High, Heart Containers only, so Kirby could heal back to 0% after each hit and I wouldn't have to worry about fractional percents. Once I knew how much damage the Murder Fist deals for all of its Staleness levels, I killed Ganondorf and started hitting a Toked Stoned Kirby with it, recording when it stopped breaking the Stone Armor (colors are the same as above). Kirby started a new Stone after each hit.
Code:
[b]Murder Fist vs Stone Armor[/b]
[color=#888888](damages are not cumulative)[/color]
 1	[color=#cc4444]33%[/color]
 2	[color=#8888ff]28%[/color]
 3	[color=#8888ff]25%[/color]
 4	[color=#8888ff]23%[/color]
 5	[color=#8888ff]21%[/color]
 6	[color=#8888ff]19%[/color]
 7	[color=#8888ff]17%[/color]
 8	[color=#8888ff]16%[/color]
 9	[color=#8888ff]15%[/color]
10+	[color=#8888ff]14%[/color]
It turns out that hitting Kirby as a Stone will indeed Stale that move; only the first Murder Fist broke the Stone Armor by itself, even though it dealt neither damage nor knockback. And a pair of completely-Stale Murder Fist only deal 29%, failing to break the Stone Armor. Stale Moves ain't really gonna be a problem for the Murder Fist, but it's still good to know that moves will Stale on the Stone.

I will update the OP with these findings.

Oh, and ph00tbag: I think you actually did see ZSS's f-tilt fail to interrupt the d-smash stun, and it's because the f-tilt was Stale. A fresh one, I'd bet, will always break the d-smash stun (meaning that you'll never see her f-tilt interrupt the d-smash stun in Training mode).

/RtEB
 

NESSBOUNDER

Smash Master
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I've found something unusual about Samus's Super missiles vs Metaknight's side B and tornado attacks.

If you fire a super missile at either of these moves, it clanks with them, then continues through and explodes as if it were connecting normally.

It could just be a priority issue, but perhaps the super missiles have a similar armor applied to them as Snake's cypher does? I tried firing them at other multi-hit attacks such as Donkey Kong's up B, and the missiles just exploded as soon as they were hit.

Most characters can jab super missiles though, which is what's throwing me off. Why do they pass through metaknight's side B, which is actually quite a high-priority attack?
 

Adapt

Smash Lord
Joined
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Messages
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I've tried to SDI during the stun and been likewise unsuccessful, though I'd forgotten. Please do test things and report your results! That knockback chart for Zamus's moves sounds like it could be quite useful (and do you have a link to it?).

/RtEB
http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=178317

This is my thread on the Zamus boards where most of the data we have on her moves is compiled. This includes ph00tbag's knockback data
 

theEffinBear

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jun 16, 2008
Messages
88
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[size=-2]BEYONDO ZA GURAVU! BURANDON HEATO-DESU![/size]​
Welcome back to the Armor Project! I went on a bit of a hiatus while busy with some other stuff, but I am Back in Black back with more SCIENCE. Tonight is the Yoshi Show!

The Smash Wiki describes Yoshi's Jump Armor thusly:
During his upward movement, Yoshi gains (approximately) 120% knockback resistance. This does not mean he flies 120% less distance when hit. It means that when hit, his flight distance is calculated from his current percentage minus 120%. So if Yoshi is hit with 150% damage during his double jump, he wil fly as far as he would if he had 30% damage. If the knockback resistance calculation's result is negative (say -50%) then Yoshi would not even flinch. This would not prevent Yoshi from being affected by hitstun.
As far as I can tell, this should mean that Yoshi would never take any knockback while double-jumping if an attack doesn't damage him enough to put his percentage above 120%; for example, Ike's n-air, which deals 9% damage, should never interrupt Yoshi's double-jump until Yoshi is at 111% or above, and Marth's AA jab (the first hit, tippered, deals 6%) should interrupt Yoshi's double-jump when Yoshi is at 114%, a mere 3% difference.

My data and results disagree with Smash Wiki's explanation: Ike's n-air begins interrupting Yoshi's double-jump earlier than 30%, while Marth's tippered 1st-hit jab doesn't interrupt Yoshi's double-jump until about 190%. Ganondorf's neutral-B will interrupt Yoshi's double-jump at 0% when fresh, while Snake's first two jabs will never break the Jump Armor, even at 999%.

This leads me to conclude that Yoshi's Jump Armor is based on knockback, which can be measured by "top launch speed" in the post-Brawl stats. Knockback is a function of a hitbox's base knockback, how Stale the move is, Yoshi's current percentage, and Yoshi's weight; the Jump Armor ignores all attacks that deals 3851 (or less) units of knockback*, and the Jump Armor is broken (ignored) by any attack that deals (at least) 3857 units of knockback. The exact threshold is therefore somewhere between 3851 and 3857 units of knockback, though my testing methods were limited to using the Handicap functionality, which has a resolution of 10% (with a maximum of 300%).
[size=-2]*In the post-Brawl stats, these units are nonsensically labeled "mph". I have chosen to omit this "mph" in my data below.[/size]

Alas, as this threshold is determined by knockback and NOT by damage dealt per hitbox (like for Snake's Cypher Armor) or total damage dealt (like for Kirby's Stone Armor), it is not nearly as easy to judge during a game.

My methodology was to go into Training mode to narrow down when a given attack would break the Jump Armor, and then test it in an actual Brawl using handicaps. Specifically, follow these steps:
0. First choose a move! I did this alone and using two controllers at once, so I was limited to moves that would be feasible to perform in real-time with only one hand per controller. If you have someone to help you test, so much the better.
1. Set Yoshi's percentage to some multiple of 10% and try to interrupt his double-jump with the move.
2. Set Yoshi's percentage to a different multiple of 10%; lower if the Jump Armor was broken already, higher if not.
3. Eventually you will have a 10% range; for example, Ike's n-air won't break the Jump Armor at 70%, but will at 80%.
4. Take it to a regular Brawl. Set Yoshi's handicap to the non-breaking percentage you found and make sure it still doesn't break the Jump Armor. Then restart the match.
5. Hit Yoshi with the move again, and quit the match, recording the "top launch speed" in the post-Brawl stats (Ike's n-air will launch at 3809 "mph" against a 70% Yoshi dealing 9% damage first).
6. Set Yoshi's handicap 10% higher and try to break the Jump Armor again. If it does, quit the match and again record the "top launch speed" (Ike's n-air is 4071 "mph" against the 80% Yoshi, still dealing 9% damage first). If it doesn't, use this as your step 5, because you messed something up earlier.
7. Repeat, repeat, and repeat again from step 0 with different characters and different moves.
8. Stop when your highest recorded knockback that doesn't break the Jump Armor converges on your lowest recorded knockback that does break the Jump Armor.

My data is below. I omitted the "mph" units and tried to use only an attack if I could be reasonably sure that I would be hitting with the same hitbox every time (Ganondorf's Jab, for example, has four or so different hitboxes; the 9% and 7% are easy to be consistent with, while the 6% and 5% hitboxes are much harder to hit with consistently). An attack that doesn't break the Jump Armor has 0 knockback for that usage. Each embedded move table below is formatted the same: the left column is Yoshi's percentages in bold, the middle column is the knockback of the move when Jump Armored (from step 5), and the right column is the knockback of the move when not Jump Armored (from step 6).
Code:
[b][color=#8888ff]Marth[/color][/b]
[color=#00ff00]6% 1st jab (tipper)[/color]
[b]190%[/b]     0  3851
[b]200%[/b]  3977  3978

[b][color=#8888ff]Ganondorf[/color][/b]
[color=#00ff00]  7% jab (near)		 9% jab (medium)       11% n-air (1st hit)[/color]
 [b]80%[/b]     0  3704	 [b]70%[/b]     0  3595	 [b]60%[/b]     0  3651
 [b]90%[/b]  3918  3919	 [b]80%[/b]  3857  3857	 [b]70%[/b]  3946  3946

[b][color=#8888ff]Ike[/color][/b]
[color=#00ff00]   12% u-tilt		    9% n-air[/color]
 [b]20%[/b]     0  3701	 [b]70%[/b]     0  3809
 [b]30%[/b]  3987  3987	 [b]80%[/b]  4071  4071

[b][color=#8888ff]Bowser[/color][/b][color=#00ff00]		      21% down-B (grounded)    11% up-B (grounded)
   12% u-tilt	       (falling hit only)      (initial hit only)[/color]
 [b]30%[/b]     0  3640	 [b]30%[/b]     0  3738	 [b]30%[/b]     0  3691
 [b]40%[/b]  3948  3948	 [b]40%[/b]  4114  4114	 [b]40%[/b]  3927  3927
Everything is pretty straightforward, with the minor exception of Marth's tipper jab and Ganon's 7% jab: when breaking the Jump Armor, these two moves dealt less knockback than when performed on a Yoshi at neutral. This difference was consistent for these two moves and did not show up anywhere else in my other tests. Possibly the Jump Armor reduces Yoshi's knockback by a minuscule amount; as it is such a small difference, I think it is safe to call it negligible.

I will edit the OP to mention these findings.

NESSBOUNDER: I have no idea why Super Missiles would pierce Meta Knight's tornado of evil despite getting canceled by other attacks, even jabs. The Mach Tornado does have some strange canceling mechanics, as it will override many moves that seem like they should cancel instead, despite dealing little damage per hitbox itself; the Super Missile oddity may be another facet of these strange mechanics.

/RtEB
 

Adapt

Smash Lord
Joined
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To further refine your results may I suggest the following:

put items on (more specifically fire flowers or fans) and use the item to damage yoshi to 87%

Ganon's jab (7% hit) will do around 3854 mph knockback at that damage. This is far from perfect due to the rounding system of brawl, but if you try it a couple times I believe you can get a median value to simplify your results
 

ph00tbag

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Oh, and ph00tbag: I think you actually did see ZSS's f-tilt fail to interrupt the d-smash stun, and it's because the f-tilt was Stale. A fresh one, I'd bet, will always break the d-smash stun (meaning that you'll never see her f-tilt interrupt the d-smash stun in Training mode).
That must be it. Ftilt does get down to abou 58% of it's normal knockback when fully decayed, and it has less knockback than dsmash at around the third use, so it would work out.
 

theEffinBear

Smash Apprentice
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I'd be much obliged if you could get some data on how decayed Zamus' f-tilt must be before it no longer interrupts the d-smash stun. I suggest using Luigi's Mansion so you can Stale the f-tilt on the pillars, and you'll probably want to kill Zamus between each "f-tilt vs d-smash stun" test (or you could hit the pillars 9 times with a different move between each test). Once you find out how Stale the f-tilt must be, then you can check the knockback (using "max launch speed") and see what the threshold is; I'm guessing it will be something like "must deal at least 0.5x/0.67x/0.75x/0.??x the knockback of the d-smash to interrupt the stun". Ideally we would have this data for multiple characters, but I'm certainly willing to settle for doing the tests on a single character for now.

If you test this and report your results, I will totally edit the topic title to "[$updateDate] The Armor Project: we have minions!". Admittedly, "minions" would make more sense if I had at least two people helping out, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

/RtEB
 

whopper_no_onion

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Messages
38
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the ghetto, hawaii
I don't know if this helps anything or not, but Wario has SA on his fart move, fully charged I believe...

Anyway, I was doing friendly matches with a wario player at a tournament one day, and I was DK. We were evenly matched, and something interesting happened midway through the match.

Wario managed to knock me off the edge, and while coming back, I started to wind up DK's Fair, just because some people are caught off guard by it.

He had a fart all charged up, and he was going to use it as an edgeguard. DK's Fair hit him at the exact moment he farted. He was spiked to his doom, and I flew off the side and died. What happened to the SA? Is it possible that all super armor has a "break point" of some sort?

Just thought I'd throw this out there.
 
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