[FF7] Air Buster's 5x damage from behind

[Vgr]

As we all know, Air Buster takes 5x normal damage from behind (= the side he didn't attack last turn) and, sometimes, we want to remove this. This data is stored in the scene.bin (Formation tab). Air Buster is considered as a "Third Side attack" by PrC and is the only enemy (As far as I know) that calls that formation. I cannot test it right now because I don't have any save nearby, but soon I will have one... I hope. I think this is as easy as changing this formation to remove that stat from Air Buster. Maybe a random encounter can have this too...

[xLostWingx]

Another note about the Air Buster Battle.  I've noticed that sometime between the beginning of the sequence with Pres Shinra and the MPs on the bridge and the start of the battle, it forces a full party.  If you try to set your party to only Cloud or Cloud and Tifa, then by the time you get into battle, you will always have Barret anyway.  Just another peculiarity about the Air Buster fight.  I got rid of that idiot for my mod, now you have to fight a Crazy Saw - which will not recieve 5x damage.

[Bosola]

It's down to the scene-specific AI.

Individual scenes can have special scripts that act independently of any battle actor. Air Buster's 5x damage, the way Waterpolos can switch out character stats and several of Bizarro Sephiroth's attributes seem to be stored in these scripts.

NFITC1 and Terrence are the people to ask about this. I've been tempted to explore the SCENE.BIN without Proud Clod and work on these functions, as they're as annoying to me as they are to you. I'll update everyone if I make any progress.

[nfitc1]

http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/Battle/Battle_Scenes#Enemy_data_format

0x00A2 in Enemy Data is "back attack damage multiplier." I'm lead to believe that ONLY airbuster has this at a value of greater than 16.

The formation has nothing to do with it. In a normal Side Attack formation if an enemy is hit from behind they'll take back-attack damage and turn around. This formation prevents them from turning around immediately after being hit. I think that's the only difference.