Buckshot's Attributes

I replaced the combat, physics, and magic calculations in Minecraft with a standardized mathematical framework. All calculations follow a strict order of operations where percentage modifiers are applied first, followed by flat modifiers. I introduced 12 new dynamic attributes to support custom scaling for modpack developers and players.

The Armor Engine and Anti-Armor

The vanilla Minecraft armor formula is fundamentally flawed. Nobody actually knows how it works under the hood, it breaks completely when mods introduce high numerical values, and it is entirely inelastic when trying to integrate it with other custom combat systems.

I replaced the vanilla calculation with a standard diminishing returns formula:

Plaintext

Damage Reduction Percentage = Effective Armor / (Effective Armor + C)

Where C is a configurable constant defaulting to 20.0. This ensures infinite numerical scaling without the entity ever reaching complete damage immunity.

Armor Toughness has been mathematically reworked into a flat damage reduction variable rather than an arbitrary buffer. The new Durable attribute dictates the timing of this flat reduction within the equation. A Durable value of 0.5 means half of your Toughness reduces incoming damage before the armor percentage reduction is calculated, and the remaining half is subtracted from the final damage after the percentage reduction is applied. The logic follows this structure:

Plaintext

Initial Flat Reduction = Effective Toughness * (1.0 - Durable)

Final Flat Reduction = Effective Toughness * Durable

To counter armor scaling, attackers utilize four new Anti-Armor attributes. Resistance Piercing ignores a percentage of the target's raw Armor. Resistance Penetration subtracts a flat amount of Armor after Piercing is calculated. Toughness Piercing ignores a percentage of the target's raw Toughness. Toughness Penetration subtracts a flat amount of Toughness after Piercing is calculated. Both effective defensive stats are calculated identically before the damage phase begins:

Plaintext

Effective Stat = (Raw Stat * (1.0 - Piercing)) - Penetration

True Zero Combat

Vanilla combat relies on a hardcoded 1.5x damage multiplier for critical hits and a hardcoded 1-damage sweeping attack specifically for swords. I removed these rules to establish a True Zero baseline. If your custom attributes are at zero, your weapon deals exactly its base damage to a single target with no particle effects or ghost damage.

Critical Efficiency adds a percentage directly to your base damage multiplier. Critical Damage adds a flat damage value to the final strike after the multiplier is applied.

Plaintext

Final Critical Damage = (Base Damage * (1.0 + Critical Efficiency)) + Critical Damage

Sweeping Efficiency determines the percentage of your base damage that carries over to the sweep radius. Sweeping Damage adds a flat damage value to the sweeping area after the percentage calculation.

Plaintext

Sweeping Damage Output = (Base Damage * Sweeping Efficiency) + Sweeping Damage

Because sweeping is dictated strictly by these numeric attributes, any item, including an axe or a bare hand, can perform a sweeping attack if granted the appropriate stats.

Physics and Magic

The mathematical framework extends to entity velocity and status effects to remove arbitrary mechanics.

Vanilla Knockback Resistance relies on a percentage chance to ignore knockback entirely, operating essentially as a random number generator. I introduced Knockback Toughness, which acts as a flat reduction to physical velocity applied before the vanilla percentage resistance.

Plaintext

Effective Knockback = (Raw Knockback - Knockback Toughness) * (1.0 - Knockback Resistance)

Those pesky silverfish won't be able to throw you in lava under your new thick and juicy resistances, but high-impact entities like Ravagers will still output enough raw velocity to bypass the flat reduction calculation.

Effect Affinity and Effect Power alter how the player's body processes potion durations in ticks, where 20 ticks equal 1 second. These stats apply directly to the receiving entity. For beneficial effects like Regeneration, the duration is multiplied by your Effect Affinity percentage, and then extended by a flat tick value dictated by your Effect Power.

Plaintext

Beneficial Duration = (Base Duration * (1.0 + Effect Affinity)) + (Effect Power * 20)

For harmful effects like Poison, the duration is multiplied by the inverse of your Effect Affinity percentage, and then reduced by the flat Effect Power value in ticks.

Plaintext

Harmful Duration = MAX(0, (Base Duration * MAX(0, 1.0 - Effect Affinity)) - (Effect Power * 20))

Reaching high Affinity mathematically forces negative status effects to expire instantly.

Configuration and Modpack Integration

The backend configuration provides direct control over the math engine variables. The common configuration file allows you to adjust the Armor Constant to throttle or accelerate armor scaling across the entire game. You can also adjust the Toughness Multiplier to define exactly how much flat damage reduction one point of Toughness provides.

Weapon behaviors are controlled via item tags rather than hardcoded instance checks. You can assign items to specific datapack tags to dictate their mechanics without writing Java code. The available sweeping tags are buckshot:attack_style/sweeps_always, buckshot:attack_style/sweeps_never, and buckshot:attack_style/sweeps_sprinting. Critical hits use the exact same tag structure replacing the word sweeps with crits.

By default, the system enforces mutual exclusion, meaning a sweeping attack cannot be triggered while the entity is falling or performing a critical hit, unless a specific tag overrides the behavior.

Buckshot's RPG Combat Attributes